Ideas and advice

Often when I feel down I play this game with the world: I look at the strangers on streets. I look them into their eyes. I smile. Then I notice how many smile back. I feel this helps to balance the scales.

Having a funny hat helps, but do give it a shot even if you don't have one.

If your Roomba is ill, you might want to disassemble it to see what might cure it... or just two see what makes it tick. I partially disassembled and reassembled our Lo (as in Robot, when said with a Japanese accent) in order to perform some more serious de-dusting. Only afterwards I found a good set of images showing how to do it properly.

Lo did not mind, though. It's now dutifully vacuuming the hallway.

After intensive searched for A4 manila file folders (the non-suspending kind) for my GTD reference system, it suddenly dawned to me. I don't need A4 manila folders, which are almost impossible to find. The mysterious word I had ran into over and over again "foolscap" did not refer to the edge of the folder, like I had assumed, but to the size. And the foolscap, sizewise, is the size almost designed to take A4 papers.

Yey! Armed with this knowledge I could find the folders I need for less than £4 per 100 (if I settle for quite thin kraft folders) or around £35 per 100 if I want the fancy, heavyduty, coloured version made by a well-known brand. Granted, I have not yet inquired about the shipping.

ATWCWI, which stands for "Avoid Time-Wasting Conversations With Idiots" was named after the Dilbert album "Always Postpone Meetings With Time-Wasting Morons" and it's the name of the by far best IRC command alias I have ever had.

I know the name sounds a bit brutal for some of you, but let me explain it first:

Avoid: Don't be bothered by
Time-Wasting: Stuff that you cannot do anything about, don't need to do anything about, or that is not contributing in any useful way to your life
Conversations: Conversations
With: With, or simply within the scope of your vision
Idiots: Not necessarily actual idiots, but people you get frustrated, angry or infuriated with, or simply overwhelmed by.

Basicly, that is a principle found in almost all productivity systems: Avoid things that distract you from what you are trying to do.

So, what does the command actually do?

/ignore -time 600 $0

It ignores a user completely for 10 minutes, and 10 minutes only. You will not see a word they say, not on the channels, nor in messages from them. The distraction will be removed, giving you time to focus, get on with more important things and maybe think about how the heated discussion was so not worth it, and how next time a more productive course of action can be taken. After the ten minutes are up, the ignore is lifted, and you'll have to reassess the situation. Usually, whatever bothered you is over by that time.

I do recommend being honest and kind when you use atwcwi. Don't offend a person and them atwcwi them without apologizing first, as that would clearly make you an idiot. Try to speak for peace. When using it to exit a conversationg you were participating in, tell them, if you can, that you valued their time, input or opinions and bid them goodbye (for a fixed time, or just 'bye' is up to you). If you just use it to temporarily ignore distracting conversations you are not participating in, no need to say anything at all. They probably hardly noticed you were there and don't need to notice you no longer see what they write.

Probably the hardest, but perhaps the most wonderful use of atwcwi is to use it on people you like. If there is a fight developing that would not solve anything, or a discussion that is just way to stressful right now, it's within your rights to 'walk away'. Tell them your reasons, honestly and kindly, tell them whether you think the conversation will be ok later, ask them gently but firmly to postpone or drop the subject with you. Then, if they will not, you can tell them that you'll need to have some space now for 10 minutes and that you hope you can talk about something else later.

In a perfect world atwcwi would not have any use at all, but before that world of everpresent kindness, patience, moderation and directness becomes a reality atwcwi can help you focus on what you want to do, be it volunteering on a support channel or just returning to talking with a friend you like without needing to lose your temper with them meanwhile.

Yesterday I finished reading Dip by Seth Godin. The book, despite its small size, discussed in some depth the difference between a dead end and a dip. However, it did not take into consideration the poor souls that are off the map of their dreams completely and who are maybe in a dip and not in a cul-de-sac, but in the wrong dip.


Look at your life, who do you want to be before you die?
Look at your life, what do you want to do?
Look at your life, who do you want to be before you die?
Look at your life, you haven't got forever.
-- The Cruxshadows: Birthday

Ask yourself if the direction you are heading is taking you to the place where you wanted to go. Or did you lost the X on the map and maybe the whole map altogether, and are now heading towards someone else's dreams.

I'm wanting to try out having a virtual assistant. Would any of you have recommendations on ones with hourly rate 10 dollars or less?

Almost every time I buy something, there is plastic wrapping or packaging involved. Many objects, like dvds and toilet paper, are wrapped in a thin layer of plastic. Others, like most shampoos, come in a plastic container that is not refillable. Finland does not properly recycle plastic from households, so most of of that plastic will end up in the landfill (what a pretty name for a mountain of garbage, by the way). Is there a way to minimize the plastic garbage generated by one's life?

Here are some ways I have found to reduce the amount of plastic garbage:

• Don't go for disposables utensils or plates, choose the real ones instead.
• Buy anything in plastic wrapping in largest possible package, thus minizing the wrapping ratio
• Use shampoos and conditioners that come in refillable bottles.
• Say "no, thank you" when stores offer you a plastic bag and use a permanent bag of your choice instead.
• When possible, buy stuff used as that will keep the seller from throwing away something that would be totally useful for you.
• When all the other things are equal, choose the non-plastic product, like a cotton shirt over a polyester shirt, or a wooden spatula over a plastic one.
• Choose high quality products. Even if it is plastic, high quality lasts longer in use than low quality.

What advice do you have for reducing the amount of plastic garbage?

Using something like Twitter might improve communications at many workplaces. Just imagine it, with once glance you could see what people are working on right now! It would much of the guesswork on who is working on what and make the employees more aware of what's going on.

(Note, I don't use Twitter at home or work currently.)

We normally play Wii on the video projector, but the sounds are quite loud in the evenings as Wii does not offer a volume control and for some reason, the volume control on the projector does not seem to work well with audio-in.

Now I finally got a solution. My initial idea was to get a cable with RCA female connectors and a headphone female connector, but those could not be found. I however found a cable with RCA male connectors and a headphone female connector, and two male-to-female RCA convertors. This combination allows me to direct Wii sound into the external computer speakers with a working volume control, allowing Wii playing to the wee hours of the night.

I have been thinking of hunting down a short heaphone cable with volume control, so then I could play Wii games on my headphones, too.

If you have the original screen protector still on your N800, or want to remove some other stubborn screen protector, the following trick is kinder to your touchscreen that trying to pry the film loose with your fingernails.

1. Take some low-tack tape (masking tape is good).

2. Smooth a piece of it, 6cm or so, diagonally at a corner so that half of it is hanging loose outside the screen area while the other 3cm is firmly attached to the film.

3. Grab the loose end and pull quickly towards the center of the screen. For those of you unfortunate enough to have waxed of hair, this movement should come quite naturally.

4. Throw away the useless film or remove the tape and clean the film for further use.

If you are by the way wondering about a weird film on your N800 that has a tiny tab at the upper right that goes under the bevel, yes, that's the original protective film and can be safely removed.

I found a way to use Amarok that fits my criteria for a usable podcatcher. Maybe someday I’ll maka a plugin that removes some of these steps, but here is what I do currently:

I only move podcasts to my portable player with Amarok. That way I can easily get them all to be under ‘podcasts’ directory without having to meddle with the path of each individual podcast.

1. Choose Transfer to Media player from the context menu of the episode.

2. Choose Mark to Listened from the context menu of the episode. Now you can tell which ones are in your transfer queue.

3. When done with your selections, attach your device, go to Devices tab and choose Transfer. For this method to work, you should transfer all of your queue.

4. Enjoy the podcasts on your device.

5. Next time when you work through your podcasts in order to choose the ones to Transfer to Media Player, choose Delete Downloaded Podcast from the context menu of those episodes the way you marked them in step 2. As you go through them in order, you can be sure that the ones below you have been transferred and that the ones above you are what you just marked for transfer.

Clove oil applied with a q-tip to a canker sore made it painless in less than a minute. It actually has been painfree since. However, clove oil is powerful stuff, so I don't recommend this if there are other things that help.

I want my keyboard 'layout' to spell "TRUST YOUR FINGERS, NOT YOUR EYES". Real layout would be the same dvorak variant I have now.

I originally thought HotBabe system monitor would just cause lonely geeks to run their systems under more load, but yesterday I finally saw the light. It's meant to be used with photos of the system administrator themselves, gradually undressing. That will make them to keep the system activity down as otherwise they will end up accidentally mooning the whole office.

This concept laptop looks beautiful but without any physical feedback touchtyping on it will not be very easy as one need to verify finger placement based on the letters on the screen instead of feeling the edges of the buttons. In addition, if touch alone is enough to press a key, the typist will need to hold his hands off the keyboard and that adds tension to the arms and shoulders.

I'd like to see a hightech laptop that fixes some of the ergonomic problems of the current laptops instead of adding new ones.