Playing around with different ways to draw simple figures. =)
Investigating the effects of drawing lines from different directions. I’m right-handed.
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Playing around with different ways to draw simple figures. =)
Investigating the effects of drawing lines from different directions. I’m right-handed.
A responsive site design is one that can adapt to different screen sizes and different devices. As you resize the browser window, elements move around or even disappear from the page.
I’ve been thinking about what the code for responsive life would look like. I recently accepted another contract, which means I’m pretty much working at close to capacity. Although I really like the breathing room of having a day or two free each week, it also seemed like a good opportunity to make a difference. With the reduction in my discretionary time, what do I give up, and what do I shift around?
Working a little later during the afternoons means that I can’t come home early to cook something nice for dinner. My husband’s been doing most of the cooking lately, but I don’t want him saddled with all the housework. Besides, I enjoy cooking. I can shift that to more of the weekends. By cooking and baking our meals in advance, we get to enjoy making food, and the weeks are a little bit easier. I thought about trying one of those meal delivery services, or even experimenting with a personal chef. I don’t know. I get a lot of intangible benefits from learning how to cook, especially when my husband and I are cooking together.
Some things I simply need to drop or postpone. For example, studying Latin takes me a lot of time. I struggle with the inflections. I don’t think I’ll be able to focus on it well over the next few weeks, so I’ll take it up again when the crunch time is over. I will probably have to repeat some of things I learned, but I think it will be all right.
Sometimes it’s a matter of investing in more tools and social processes. For example, I’m experimenting with dictation as a way to write while doing other things, or while relaxing my wrists. I’m thinking of restarting my experiments in outsourcing, too. It should be easy to find someone who can handle the data entry from the receipts that I’m scanning, or who can help me cross-reference my passport entry stamps with trips in my record so that when I submit my application for Canadian citizenship, all my paperwork is in order. Little things like that, particularly little things that take a lot of time — those would be great candidates for outsourcing.
There are some hobbies that I still want to hang onto. Writing and gardening are both great ways for me to relax. Drawing lets me take notes from books and presentations. I guess that’s a little like the min-width of a web site design. I don’t want my life get any smaller than that. I don’t want to work so much that I don’t have time to spend with family and friends, or my laptop and a good book. After all, this is my adventure. I can choose what I do.
So far things have been wonderful, so I just want to make sure that I monitor the balance as I try out this new arrangement. That way, I can fix things if anything starts to get out of whack.
What if I stretch life the other way? Both of these contracts will eventually wrap up, and I occasionally think about what I want to do next. I’d like to see what it’s like to spend some focused time on building things: writing a book, working on my own code, playing around with ideas. I guess the web design equivalent of this would be is building a site for people who have those humongous monitors. Just have so much more room to play with – that’s a completely different playing field.
Different kinds of work lend us different metaphors for looking at life. It might be interesting to look at life through the lens of design. How can I improve the user experience? How can I adapt to changing conditions? How can I take advantage of emerging technologies and toolkits?
We’ll see. This is going to be fun.
Org Mode is a personal information manager for the Emacs text editor. People have contributed a ton of useful features to it over the years, and the development shows no sign of slowing down. One of the features I’ve been playing around with is the ability to track habits.
Org habits are recurring tasks. For example, everyday, I want to:
Every week, I want to:
Once a month, I want to:
Org habits let me manage my task list without cluttering future days with tasks. The Org agenda view displays habits that are due today, indicating consistency with colour. In particular, it shows overdue days in red, so you can get the Seinfeld-esque pleasure/commitment-device of not breaking the chain.
Here’s a view from Sunday:
2 days-agenda (W19-W20): Sunday 13 May 2012 8:00...... ---------------- 10:00...... ---------------- 12:00...... ---------------- 14:00...... ---------------- 15:57...... now - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 16:00...... ---------------- 18:00...... ---------------- organizer: 22:00...... TODO Capture a one-sentence note ! organizer: 22:00...... TODO Plan the next day ** ***** ** *****! organizer: Scheduled: TODO Make a list of recipes I want to learn organizer: Scheduled: TODO Write a bunch of blog posts :writing: organizer: Scheduled: TODO Set up WordPress as my backup system Monday 14 May 2012 W20 organizer: Scheduled: TODO Build Emacs interface so that I can have Org automatically switch my tasks
To use Org habits, customize org-modules and enable the habit module. To set something as a habit, use C-c C-x p (org-set-property) to set the STYLE property to habit. For more information, you should definitely check out the Org manual’s section on habits.
Yay Emacs and the people who contribute to it!
Click on the image for a larger version or contact me for a high-res version (2608x1600px). Feel free to share this under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence.
Lots of great research released under Creative Commons. Yay Jeremiah Owyang and Altimeter!
Quick notes for searching, more later: Social business hierarchy of needs: Foundation –> Safety –> Formation –> Enablement –> Enlightenment
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Enjoy!
We’re settling into a routine of making pizza from scratch almost every week. It’s relatively quick and easy to make. I use the basic bread dough recipe from Jamie Oliver’s cookbook, "jamie’s kitchen". W- prefers it when we make a double batch of dough with just one batch worth of yeast, and let the dough rise overnight. This results in these really puffy, bread-like pizza crusts.
After the dough rises, it takes me just an hour to prepare four pizzas. I divide the dough into four parts, forming them into rectangles by stretching and rolling them out. I use practically all of the baking sheets in the house. While the pizza crusts rise again, I chop and grate the rest of the ingredients. Assembly is quick and fun, although I still tend to err on the side of loading the pizza up with too much food. Baking takes twenty minutes per batch of two pizzas, and then we have plenty of pizza to eat through the week.
We’re always looking for kid-friendly recipes that we can cook in bulk. Pizza is a great way to use up bits and pieces from the fridge: pepperoni, chicken, peppers, tomatoes, and so on. Other family go-to recipes include pasta and curry. Good to be able to make things ahead!
I moved the calendar to the fridge so that we can use it to plan the meals during the week. Another step towards even smoother everyday routines!
Technically not my decision – W- was the one who decided to get J- a kick scooter so that she can easily go to school or hang out with friends. Since J- stays with her mom during the weekends, the scooter’s fair game for trips to stores or libraries.
The Razor A5 Lux was $69.99 during a Toys R Us sale a few weeks ago. None of the stores we went to had it in stock, so W- got a raincheck. This week, we dropped by Dufferin Mall and bought the kick scooter. The box wouldn’t fit in my bike bags, so we tested the scooter and discarded the box when we were satisfied that we didn’t need to return it. Without the box, the scooter fit neatly into my bike bag.
My bike’s big and hard to lug up the stairs, so I’ve been trying out the A5 for short trips. It cuts the 750m walk from ten minutes to five, although there’s a bit more exercise involved. I don’t have the same carrying capacity that I have on my bicycle, but the scooter is a lot more convenient for short trips. Worth it, I think! We’ll see how it works out over the next couple of weeks.
[X] Earn: E1: Mon-Thu (training, prototyping) [X] Connect: Go to Toronto Reference Library small business meetup and post sketchnotes [X] Connect: Follow up on conversations from #torontob2b [X] Build: Draw a visual metaphor or book summary: $100 Startup [X] Watched the Avengers with friends [X] Plant vegetables and herbs [ ] Earn: R1 Mon,Fri [ ] Earn: E1 Tue-Thu [ ] Connect: Have lunch with mentor [ ] Connect: Take sketchnotes of Jeremiah Owyang talk [ ] Build: Migrate old time data for Quantified Awesome [ ] Build: Hire VA for data entry [ ] Build: Review applications for WordPress development [ ] Host study group [ ] Have massage [ ] Get receipts typed in with line-item detail