6098 comments
2357 subscribers
6263 on Twitter
Subscribe! Feed reader E-mail

Turning downtime into uptime

One of the reasons why I wanted a Blackberry or some other portable device was to make better use of those interstitial moments walking from Graduate House to the subway station or taking the train. I had thought of using the time to practice connecting with people, but it’s hard to do that when people don’t smile or make eye contact. I’ve also tried reading. I snag a newspaper on my way out and keep a folder of executive summaries from Books24x7 in my backpack. Listening to music? Sure, although I usually find myself looping over one song or album.

After hearing Dan Zen describe his experience with recording a video
blog while driving his car (kids, don’t try that at home!), I thought:
hey, why not record on the go? The quality’s going to be terrible -
lots of ums and ahs and random traffic noises – but just as blogging
helps me refine my thoughts, talking about things will help me refine
my stories.

It turns out that the digital voice recorder I bought
almost a year ago is surprisingly useful. The low
sensitivity setting on the microphone works perfectly for noisy
settings, and I can pick out my own voice easily. For presentations
and the like, I set it on high sensitivity so that I can record the
presentation clearly even on the iPod screen.

Good stuff!

Random Japanese sentence: フランス語のCHATは英語のCATを意味する。 The French word `chat’ means `cat’

Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/3642

On This Day...

  • 2012: A day of gardening — We rehabilitated the front and back planter boxes, mixing in plenty of composted cow manure into the sandy soil. I [...]
  • 2011: How I organize my personal finances — Update: I found the image! Mia is learning more about personal finance. She came across my post on my financial network [...]
  • 2011: Four-day weekend ahead — Today is Canada Day. Monday is a floater day for IBMers in Ontario. (IBM uses floater days to balance out [...]
  • 2010: Tools, big companies, and collaboration — I love building tools. I love making hard or tedious things easy. I could build tools all day. A big [...]
  • 2009: Hobby day holiday — I spent Canada Day indulging in hobbies that benefit from concentrated time. It was terrific! I started the day by sewing [...]
  • 2009: Recent photos — 20090701
  • 2009: Combining multiple social media services — If you’re new to social media and Web 2.0, you probably feel overwhelmed by all the different tools that are [...]
  • 2009: Thinking of a travel dossier — I usually spend the evening before a flight putting together a travel dossier. It includes: a map of the route from [...]
  • 2008: Enough time: a new hire’s reflections — After one of the new hires read my blog, she asked me, "How do you find the time to do [...]
  • 2007: Weekly review — I really enjoyed the Ottawa Linux Symposium because of the hallway conversations and the afterparties that I attended. The conference [...]
  • 2006: Purposeful interaction — I realized yesterday that one of my weaknesses is that I’m usually more reactive than proactive when it comes to interacting [...]
  • 2005: Working with Emacs — A recent post on the Philippine Linux Users’ Group suggested a separate plug-emacs mailing lists for all the Emacs messages that [...]
  • 2004: Brainbench — Just in case you want to get certified but don’t want to shell out the bucks for it, Brainbench is making [...]
  • 2004: “Students Create Global Positioning System Text Messages” — A trio of Iowa State University computer science students has devised “spatial cues,” a computer program that combines text messaging with [...]
  • 2004: The Open Technology Landscape — Juebert Uriarte — Technical consultant, Sun Microsystems Philippines, Inc. “Open source, open standards, open systems – a recipe for open government” - Put a little [...]
  • 2004: Message from the Sponsors: Antonio TJ Javier — “Partnering with Government to Realize Potential” — - Objective: Perspective of what we’re supposed to be deing here. - Mission: Enable people and businesses threghout the world to [...]
  • 2004: Message from the Sponsors: Cynthia Mamon — - Historic event: partnering with Microsoft to help develop the Philippines to be a globally competitive country. - Brief background. Doing it [...]
  • 2004: Government CIO Forum — - Yay! I don’t have to do it. Rommel Feria is here to save the day! - Extemia is a free [...]
  • 2003: Sweet code — http://www.sweetcode.org/

Get the highlights as a PDF!

Stories from my Twenties: Highlights from a Decade of Blogging

Free sample!