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Saturday, October 30, 2004

Visual style changes

I finally got bored of the look of the blog. I decided to write my own CSS instead of using a standard template, and this is the final result.

I have only tested on Firefox 0.92, so if it doesn't look right on your browser, leave a comment.

Thursday, October 28, 2004

Sunset at the chinese gardens

I was going through some of the photos I had taken a few months back when I found this one. I dont think I have posted it before, so here it is - Link: Sunset at the chinese gardens

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Getting things done: An update

If you still remember, I had blogged a while back about 43 Folders and the "Getting Things Done" (GTD) book. Well, its time for the first status update.

Getting started


So far, I'm happy to say that the system does seem to be working. To get started, all you need is a computer and 4 text files. Lets call them inbox.txt, actions.txt, projects.txt and someday.txt.

Step 1


Anytime you remember that you need to do something, open inbox.txt and add a line there with the item you need to do. For example, inbox.txt might look like this

* Prepare project plan
* Buy shaving blades
* Pay house rent
* Fix bugs 322, 323, and 345
* Buy xbox
* Buy newspaper

Step 2


Every morning, you review your inbox.txt. Go through each item and categorise it like this -
Do I need to do this ? If not, delete the item.
Does it take less than 2 minutes to do ? If yes, stop everything and complete it immediately. Then delete the item.
Is this a single action ? If yes, copy the item to actions.txt and delete the item and delete the item from the inbox.
Is this something I want to do, but sometime way in the future ? If yes, copy the item to someday.txt and delete the item from the inbox.
Is this a project ? (A project is anything that takes more than one action to do). If yes, copy the item to projects.txt and delete the item from the inbox.

If its none of the above, its probably not important. Delete it.

Important: Make sure you go through each item in order. Once you have decided what to do with it, delete it from the inbox. By the time you are done with all items, the inbox should be empty.

Step 3


Go through each item in the actions.txt file and start finishing those actions. As you complete them, delete them from actions.txt. Actions can be taken in any order you want. If you complete a project, delete the project from your projects.txt file as well.

Step 4


Once a day, go through your projects.txt and decide what next action you need to do to complete the project. Put this in your actions.txt.

Step 5


Whenever you get any new stuff that needs to be done, add it to your inbox.txt.

Step 6


Once in a while (say every month or so), check your someday.txt file and see if you feel like going ahead with anything there. If you do, then add it to your projects.txt file. Otherwise, leave it as it is.

Thats it! Right away, you will start seeing an improvement in your productivity. This is not the complete thing of course, and it can get much more complicated than this, but this is enough for someone to get started without getting overwhelmed.

Saturday, October 16, 2004

Friday, October 15, 2004

Continuations, coroutines, closures,...

A lot of discussion on continuations, coroutines and closures seems to be floating around in the python end of the Internet in response to some discussions on the comp.lang.python newsgroup and the python mailing list. I'm going to be collecting some of the material and going through it and later I'll be blogging here on these topice. Anyone with interesting links related to these topics are encouraged to reply in the comments.

Sunday, October 10, 2004

Friday, October 08, 2004

Google SMS

(via Gizmodo) : Google SMS - Another new service from Google. Send an SMS to GOOGL (US only) and recieve information like the nearest restaurants, addresses and w whole lot more (click the link to get the whole list). Google now has a ton of services for a web search company. What will they get into next ?

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Hierarchy is an organisation with its face towards the CEO and its ass towards the customer

- Jack Welch

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Evan Williams leaves Google

Evan Williams leaves google. Evan was the guy who co-founded Pyra Labs (the creators of Blogger), way back in 1999.

SpaceShipOne wins XPrize

I just read the news. The second flight which was scheduled for October 4th was a success, and with that they have claimed the Ansari XPrize. Mojave airport now becomes the worlds first licensed spaceport. This is fantastic. Could this be the big boost that space tourism required ?

NPR also has a roundup of this historic event.

Friday, October 01, 2004

J2SE 5.0 released

J2SE 5.0 has finally been released.

So, the product has shipped, generics and all. The generics feature has caused mountainloads of controversy, especially over the 'erasure' feature which makes the compiler 'forget' the type of a generic within a function (for more, see Bruce Eckels posts here, here, here and here).

So will all that controversy affect actual usage of generice in Java ? We shall have to see.

The Invisible Train

(Via Scoble) Time for something cool. The Invisible Train