As a bunch of techies we spend a lot of time playing with computers and blogging about what we find.  And so the image of techies becomes a self fulfilling prophesy of nerdy people who never see the sunlight.  But that is not true.....

This blog serves to shed a little light on the private life of someone who lives in that world.  I am married with two children.  They are aged 10 and very nearly 7.  My wife and I are the official taxi drivers of our children to support their busy social life.  And they are busy with tennis, rugby, swimming, cub scouts, beaver scouts and a whole host of other things.

But new this year is my eldest sons venture into acting.  Having been watching I'd Do Anything on the BBC and really enjoying it, when the local musical society advertised for children for their production of Oliver!, he had to have a go.

So we supported him towards a small chorus part, his first step on the stage.  But no, the son of a techie, only the best would do.  And so he returned from the audition as Oliver.  And as a family we are so proud, tired and well versed in the words and songs of the show.  There are regular journeys to rehearsals, costume fittings, continual Oliver music playing, the script being practiced and very soon dress rehearsals.

But in October that level of pride will go through the roof as I watch Rowan step onto the stage.  And when he is on stage, on his own, singing "where is love", I hate to think what sort of blubbering human being I will turn into.

And so far I have not had the opportunity to apply my computer to the process.  So this blog is it.  I will not take over any more.

And if you want to see what it is that we will all be so proud of, then here are the details.

There are two Olivers, just like the London West End show starting later this year.  Rowan and Logan are sharing the duties.  Rowan is doing the evening of the 22nd and 24th; and the afternoon of the 25th.  Logan will take the lead for the others.  Who knows, the West End may be calling them soon.

And where is this taking place?

Hayling Community Centre, Station Road, Hayling Island, PO11 0HB, UK

So wish him luck, "break a leg".

The convergence of many devices into my phone has meant that I now have to carry less things around.  But it seems likely that during this process there are going to be the odd hick-up.

I have a Vodafone v1615 phone running windows mobile 6.  One of the nice features of this phone is the built-in GPS and supplied TomTom 6 software.  It works a treat, I always have navigation available to me and it had helped me out of some horrible traffic jams.

But there is one annoyance, when you start TomTom the sound is set to mute.  Going to the options and toggling mute does not fix it until you toggle mute the second time.

I understand that this problem does not exist in TomTom 7, but if you encounter this problem, simply change the volume using the wheel on the side of the phone.  This will immediately enable sound again.  No more messing with the menus several time.

Getting Things Done, commonly abbreviated as GTD, is a time management method, a commitment management method, and the title of a book by David Allen.

GTD rests on the principle that a person needs to move tasks out of their mind and get them recorded somewhere. That way, the mind is freed from the job of remembering everything that needs to be done, and can concentrate fully on actually performing those tasks.

What GTD is about

Unlike other time management experts, Allen does not start his emphasis on setting priorities. Instead he advocates creating lists of tasks that are specific to a context, for example, having a list of telephone calls to make or errands to do downtown. He also suggests that any new task which can be completed in less than two minutes should be done immediately.

The psychology of GTD is based on making it easy and fun to store, track and retrieve all the information related to the things you need to get done. Allen suggests that many of the mental blocks we encounter in regard to doing certain activities are caused by insufficient 'front-end' planning (i.e. for any project we need to clarify what is to be achieved and what specific actions are needed to achieve it) It is most practical, according to Allen, to do this thinking in advance, generating a series of actions which we can later undertake without any further planning.

Allen also contends that our mental 'reminder system' is rather inefficient and seldom reminds us what we need to do at the time and place that we can do it. Consequently, the 'next actions' stored by context in the 'trusted system' act as an external support which ensures that we are presented with the right reminders at the right time. There are many associated personal management tips and tricks detailed in Getting Things Done which can be useful for implementing the workflow described by Allen.

A capsule description of GTD from Allen's book Ready for Anything:

“Get everything out of your head. Make decisions about actions required on stuff when it shows up — not when it blows up. Organize reminders of your projects and the next actions on them in appropriate categories. Keep your system current, complete, and reviewed sufficiently to trust your intuitive choices about what you're doing (and not doing) at any time.”

Principles

The core principles of GTD are as follows:

Collect

Capture everything that you need to track or remember or act on in what Allen calls a 'bucket': either a physical inbox, or an email inbox, or a tape recorder, or notebook, or a combination of these. Get everything out of your head and into your collection device, ready for processing. All buckets should be processed to empty at least once per day.

Process

When you process your inbox, follow a strict workflow:

• Start at the top.
• Deal with one item at a time.
• Never put anything back into 'in'.
• If an item requires action:

• do it (if it takes less than two minutes),
• delegate it, or
• defer it.

• If not,

• file it for reference,
• throw it away, or
• incubate it for possible action later.

The 2-minute Rule: If it would take less than 2 minutes to do something, just do it right away. Two minutes is a guideline, roughly the time it would take to formally defer the action.

Organize

Allen describes a suggested set of lists which you can use to keep track of items awaiting attention:

• Next actions - For every item requiring your attention, decide what is the next action that you can physically take on it. For example, if the item is 'Write project report', the next action might be 'Email Fred for meeting minutes', or 'Call Jim to ask about report requirements', or something similar. Though there may be many steps and actions required to complete the item, there will always be something that you need to do first, and this should be recorded in the next actions list. Preferably, these are organized by the context in which they can be done, such as 'in the office', 'by the phone', or 'at the store'.
• Projects - every 'open loop' in your life or work which requires more than one physical action to achieve becomes a 'project'. These are tracked and periodically reviewed to make sure that every project has a next action associated with it and can thus be moved forward.
• Waiting for - when you have delegated an action to someone else or are waiting for some external event before you can move a project forward, this must be tracked in your system and periodically checked to see if action is due or a reminder needs to be sent.
• Someday/Maybe - things that you want to do at some point, but not right now. Examples might be 'learn Chinese', or 'take diving holiday'.

A calendar is also important for keeping track of your appointments and commitments; however, Allen specifically recommends that the calendar be reserved for what he terms the 'hard landscape': things which absolutely have to be done by a particular deadline, or meetings and appointments which are fixed in time and place. 'To-do' items should be reserved for the next action lists.

Fans of Google's Gmail online email service use labels to create 'To-Do' lists and projects as explained in Bryan Murdaugh "Getting Things Done with Gmail" [1] whitepaper. It keeps many of the same concepts of GTD but implements them into online email.

A final key organizing component of GTD is the filing system. Getting Things Done says that a filing system, if it is to be used, must be easy, simple and fun. Even a single piece of paper, if you need it for reference, should have its own file. Allen's suggestion is that you keep a single, alphabetically organized filing system, in order to make it as quick and easy as possible to store and retrieve the information you need.

Review

The lists of actions and reminders will be of little use if you don't review them at least daily, or whenever you have time available. Given the time, energy and resources that you have at that particular moment, decide what is the most important thing for you to be doing right now, and do it.

At least weekly, the discipline of GTD requires that you review all your outstanding actions, projects and 'waiting for' items, making sure that any new tasks or forthcoming events are entered into your system, and that everything is up to date. Allen suggests the creation of a tickler file in order to help refresh your memory each week with your outstanding tasks and projects.

Do

Any organizational system is no good if you spend all your time organizing your tasks instead of actually doing them! David Allen's contention is that if you can make it simple, easy and fun to take the actions that you need to take, you will be less inclined to procrastinate or become overwhelmed with too many 'open loops'.

Tools and techniques

A slice of '43 Folders'

One device that Allen suggests is the tickler file for organising your paperwork (also known as the '43 folders'). Twelve folders are used to represent each month and an additional 31 folders are used to represent each day. The folders are arranged to help remind you of activities to be done that day. Each day you open to the numbered folder representing today's date. You take all the items out of the folder and put the empty folder into the next month. This sort of management allows you to file hardcopy reminders to yourself. For instance, if you had a concert on the 12th of the month, you would store the tickets in the 12th folder, and when the 12th came around, they would be there waiting for you.

Finally, Office 2007 feedback is being taken seriously.  You can send the team a smiley face of a sad face.

http://blogs.msdn.com/joe_friend/archive/2006/05/25/606779.aspx

Problem

I hit a page-numbering snag in a 20-page Word document. I wanted to use the Page X of Y AutoText entry in the footer, but I didn't want the footer to appear on the title page. I fixed that problem by selecting the Different First Page option in the Layout tab of the Page Setup dialog box, which left the footer on the title page blank. One problem remains, though: The total number of pages in the document is still 20, so the page after the title page says Page 2 of 20. I want it to say Page 1 of 19, since the title page doesn't count.

Solution

Word builds the Page X of Y AutoText entry from a pair of fields: Page and Numpages. You can manipulate the Numpages field to return the page count you're after. Then you can use Word's Start At setting to display page 1 for the page following your title page.

Tweaking the Numpages field

1. Open the footer and press [Alt][F9] to display field codes. You should see this:

Page { PAGE } of { NUMPAGES }

2. Highlight { NUMPAGES} and press [Ctrl][F9] to create a new field that nests the Numpages field, like this:

Page { PAGE } of { { NUMPAGES} }

3. The insertion point will be where you need it, between the two opening braces, so just type =.
4. Click between the two closing braces and type -1. Here's what you should have:

Page { PAGE } of { = { NUMPAGES} -1 }

5. Highlight the contents of the footer and press [F9] to update the fields.
6. Press [Alt][F9] to switch to results mode, and you should see this:

Page 2 of 19

"Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition" is a fantastic piece of software for managing your photo albums and it is free.  However, you may be frustrated at the american date format and no apparent option to change it.

You can change it.  Use Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D

Obvious really

The Orange SPV phones suffer a problem connecting to GPRS for mail at times.  On the full windows mobile phones this can be seen as a CONNMGR_33 error.  For smartphone users the phone simply refuses to get mail.  In all cases the phone cannot recover from this and requires a reset.

There is a work around for this.

1. Put the phone in flight mode
2. Switch off flight mode

This resets the radio part of the phone and resolves the connection error.  This is better than resetting the phone (which looses current settings) and is quicker.

Still not perfect, but better