It’s late so I won’t write a whole heap about this, I just wanted to collect some of the to-do list/organisational links I was searching through in the verve of New Year’s resolutioning.
While you’re reading all this, check out musicovery in the background, it’s a cute interactive radio station, it’s like the music genome project only it’s less linear. You can choose mood or dance and you can limit the choices by genre and decade (as far back as the 50s). Software:
My Life Organised – I’ve played around with this software a little and I think it has real potential. It’s got a really simple interface but is powerfully flexible. You can export in and out of MindManager mind mapping software which is pretty cool if you use it. Here are some reviews at 43 Folders, this one and this one explains how the program works a bit. There are some instructions for implenting the GTD system (see below). The developer is still very active and it has community support.
For Mac users, Kinklesslooks like it could be worth a test drive, it’s free but you need to have bought OmniOutliner (though that’s meant to be good too). What’s cool too is that it is should sync with your ipod.
Advice:
43 Folders advice on building smarter to-do lists: Part 1 and Part 2.
To-done is a blog that isn’t updated anymore but worth looking through the archives for tips.
Get Things Done (GTD): The system of allocating time and place to next actions promoted by Dave Allen (the other main competitor is the Franklin/Covey system which concentrates on importance/urgency – here’s a weird article about the Franklin Covey synthesis, a forum post on which system is better – I think a combination is best – it has some neat tips). 43 Folders is one of the big promoters of the GTD cult – here’s a nice intro to GTD.
Flylady: Rather popular system for managing households and their chores. She suggests creating a Control Journal. One way to domestic goddess status I suppose, but all a bit TOO orderly for me though.
For more paper based to-do lists:
The Pocket Mod: An online wizard for creating printed organisers. You can also download an offline version. Very neat.
The Printable CEO Series: Free printable forms to help you manage your day to day tasks so you can focus on being a CEO/your business.
Darkroom: A cool download when you have a writing project to concentrate on, it blacks out your screen so there are no distractions, your text then shows up in Matrix-esque green Courier.
Found some stuff on sleep and making it/you more productive, here’s one and another on polyphasic sleep (”taking multiple short sleep periods throughout the day instead of getting all your sleep in one long chunk”) – I can’t think that it would be good for you. And one on How to Become an Early Riser and Tips for getting to sleep faster & sleeping better.
Anyway, good luck with your New Year resolutions/goals and HAPPY NEW EVERYONE!
I’m finally catching up on the extended DVDs of the Lord of Rings. I actually sat through the marathon of the 3 normal length ones when the third one came out, from memory I think it started at 9pm and went until 7am the next day. It was brilliant, but horrible getting home afterwards. I was planning to do a marathon of the extended versions but it didn’t really happen, I’m part way through the first disc of third part now. During the second part, I had this annoying half song playing in my head but I couldn’t put my finger on the tune, all I knew it was one of those viral videos a while ago so I went and did a google search “lord of the rings remix” and it was the first link that turned up – They’re Taking the Hobbits to Isengard by Erwin Beekveld. Then strangely enough, a minute later the scene turns up. Aragorn: “What do your elven eyes see?” Legolas: “The Uruks turn Northeast. They are taking the hobbits to Isengard!”. I couldn’t stop laughing. It’s a very silly movie.
So much ham! I bought 1.5kg of the stuff and we only got through about half of it on the day. Fortunately, I didn’t buy a leg, last time I did that we had ham for a month afterwards. Anyway, here’s a quick recipe from my leftovers:
Ham (about 100-200g) – cut into strips 1″ long 2 garlic cloves – chopped/crushed, however you like them Can of chopped Italian tomatoes Roasted capsicum – sliced thinly (optional, I just had some because I cooked up some old capsicum) Good extra virgin olive oil Cream
Fry up the ham and garlic until lightly browned, add can of tomatoes (drained if whole tomatoes, I don’t know why they are so much more watery), capsicum and a tablespoon or two of the olive oil and simmer until the tomatoes smell cooked, add cream to taste (not too much though, don’t get it too watery). If it is too watery, simmer until reduced to a desirable consistency.
Serve with whatever pasta you have in your cupboard (I had penne which was perfect).
Christmas was a bit of a write-off due to my having caught a yucky cold from work, but I did manage some food prep. Christmas day lunch was fairly simple, mainly cold meats, prawns and salads. Anyway, here was the spread:
Ham and salami: Norton St grocers in Leichhardt (Sydney) was NOT the place to be on Saturday 23rd Dec 2006. They should have actually stopped people coming into the store (like they did in Myers on the Boxing Day Sale yesterday) it was stupidly crowded at 9am. I got my ticket for the deli counter and went off and bought my wrapping paper at the newsagents and some meat, dropped it off in my car and came back with plenty of time.
Prawns: Somehow I managed to find prawns that weren’t imported or farmed, they were even a completely different colour to the farmed stuff (pale pink as opposed to a lurid orange). We first went to the fish markets and there was nothing labelled “ocean” so went home in despair, mainly for my Abyssinian Simby who LOVES them. In the end I found them in the fish shop in Market town (Leichhardt) which has the most bizarre fit out, the counters are all about 5 and a half foot high so you have to get on your tippy toes (I’m short) to order or pay. Very strange. Made up some lime aioli with eggs from the organic market in Rozelle.
Tomato and basil salad with buffalo mozzarella instead of the usual cow stuff, so tasty (even with my snuffy nose blocking half of my ability to taste). This was also purchased from Norton St grocer at huge cost. I didn’t check how much it was before I ordered so was rather shocked to find two, albeit large, balls of the stuff turned out to be over $16 (which wouldn’t have been surprising if I knew the stuff was $50/kilo). Oh well, now I know what it tastes like. The tomatoes were from the organic market but they weren’t organic
Beetroot and lettuce salad: I had to check up on the chickens at my community garden on Christmas morning so I picked up a few organic lettuce leaves and herbs, anyway, this was arranged on an old but pretty Italian pottery plate we have and then I put a previously prepared beetroot salad in vinaigrette on top. It was very pretty, the randiant but deep maroon of the beets, green of the leaves and the midnight blue of the plate.
Smoked Salmon bits: don’t know what to call this, got little strips of smoked salmon and put blobs of this fresh goats curd (tastes a bit like cream cheese but fresher and goatier… could substitute though) with bits of roasted tomatoes, topped it with a sprig of flat leaf parsley and wrapped them into little rolls. Most tasting!
Christmas pudding: From the Newcastle pudding lady who makes one of the nicest puddings that you can buy. It’s been a couple of years at least since I’ve made my own, I used to have the perfect recipe but I’ve lost it (ah sorrow) and the last attempts at a replacement were sorely lacking. We all have our particular tastes and I like mine both rich and mild which is a hard balance to get perfectly right. The Newcastle pudding lady comes pretty damn close though. My day bought it at the beginning of the month and had actually eaten HALF of it before Christmas day and then blamed it on my mother. Incredible! Fortunately, he got the large one so there was still plenty.
Various fruit from the organic fruit market at Rozelle.
Some french chocolate (Delfin?) which came in the wonderful combination of dark chocolate and lemongrass. They also had lavender but I didn’t get that.
I made some gingerbread and shortbread as presents from the latest Jamie (how I cook?) cookbook. I’ll post the recipe later.
For boxing day, we ate leftovers and dinner was Saltimbocca: I used this recipe from Serge Dansereau as a starting point. Got some thin slices of veal from AC Butchers in Leichhardt (any European/good butcher will do them for you – can ask for veal for schnitzel too) and pound them until they are v. thin (Serge suggests 1/8th of an inch). Crush some garlic and mix with salt, rub this into one side of the meat, cover with 3-5 sage leaves and then press 2-3 fine slices of proscuitto on top so the sage is completely covered. If you have toothpicks you can use them to secure the proscuitto/sage to the veal but I couldn’t find any so I just fried them anyway… if you press the proscuitto on to the veal hard enough, it just sticks. They only need a couple of minutes on each side if your veal is thin enough and then they are ready to serve. The proscuitto sort of welds itself into the veal so it becomes one tasty little parcel.
In the huge pile of videos posted to Boing Boing in the last post, I found this story about how photoshop stops you scanning in money because of government petitioning. Well US and EU money at least, they didn’t mention the Australian stuff but it could well be included. So even though there’s plenty of legal things you can do with a scanned image of a banknote, it assumes that you’re going to use it for counterfeiting and just bans you from opening it (or printing anything with it in it depending on your version). Blah!
Here’s a workaround in a video podcase from Deke McLelland using Adobe’s Image Ready which “isn’t very smart”. [link, direct link to podcast]. He also links to RulesForUse.org which is a really simple site that tells you what the law is in your country re: reproduction of currency images.
Mark Frauenfelder has put together a singular post of his video picks from the past couple of years of Boing Boing. Highlights include the famous Bank of America’s employees’ cover of U2’s One (which came with a cease-and-desist letter from Universal, it’s since been removed from YouTube but you can still watch it here with commentary) and the much cooler cover by Johnny Marr and that guy from Arrested Development (which hasn’t been pulled from YouTube at the time of writing):
And the Scandinavian way (apparently!) of opening beer (they teach it to 12 year olds): link (YouTube embed was disabled, meanies!).
Finally, they did link to the wonderful zefrank whose site is a christmas present in itself (try out the singing elf card) and his silly Chrismas video.
I don’t know why I like machinima so much, must be that hole in my brain but this is quite funny not just by my low standards hopefully. It’s been made with captured footage from World of Warcraft, starring a Tauren (cattle humanoid) and a Troll. The Internet is for Porn:
Was trying to remember this idea the other night, all I could remember was that it was from somebody who did triangles and his name started with a “p” and it WASN’T Pythagoras. Anyway it’s been killing me for the past few days and google searches didn’t help. I knew it was someone really famous and it would be obvious if I could just get the name. In the end I found a list of mathematicians beginning with P on Wikipedia. It was Pascal! Yay! Anyway here’s a link to his triangle and his wager (that was the idea whose attribution was annoying me so).
