Getting Things Done…at last

July 3, 2007

Too many things are asking for attention in my head. When I go to bed my head is still buzzing with things to do or finish, which does not help falling asleep…

In the past I used the Task application on my Palm to scribble things I had to do. However lately I stopped doing that, especially at work, because most of the time I’m behind my MacBook, where I used Stickies. Using Palm Desktop & Palm Hotsync on my old XP box did not help the integrated experience either ….

After reading Merlin Mann’s 43folders about Getting Things Done I decided to investe some time in it.

I bought the audiobook Getting Things Done by Dave Allen and listened to it while driving to work. It sounded sensible, so I decided to see if I could have an integrated experience where stuff is not floating and rotting all over the place. Virtual stickies, real stickies, Task Application, mail, paper, MY HEAD, MY HEAD.

I decided to have a go at GTD. I’m an Omni fanboy, but OmniFocus is not yet released so I used iGTD as a GTD tool. BTW OmniFocus has to be a lot better than iGTD for me to buy it…

iSync, HotSync, BlueTooth

First I installed Palm Desktop on my Mac and configured iSync to synchronize over BlueTooth then enabled Palm OS syncing in iSync. This will install the iSync Conduit in Palm HotSync. With this you cannot only Sync your Palm with your MacBook to the Palm Desktop calendar application, Palm Desktop task application etc. It also syncs with Mac’s iCal and the Mac Adressbook application. Sweet!! So no need to use the Palm Desktop applications anymore (perhaps for installing new Palm applications). Just use iCal and AddressBook. It syncs 2-way. And if you select in iSync “Put events created on Palm into:” to @inbox it will make the integration with iGTD smoother. However to be able to do this iGTD should be installed already.

If I now HotSync my Palm it syncs the Calendar and Tasks with my Mac (over BlueTooth) and vice versa of course. That’s nice.

iCal, iGTD, Mail and MailTags

I installed MailTags to Apple Mail since this will enable the iGTD integration. After enabling the mail integration in iGTD, whenever I receive a mail which needs my attention later I press F6 and it ends up in iGTD (and then iCal and Palm whenever I sync).

When entering a task in iGTD it will be synchronized with iCal and vice versa.

Hitting F6 when in a browser will create a task in iGTD with the current URL.

Hitting Apple-Space to enter QuickSilver, doing the dot maneuver to enter Text Mode. Scribble something, do the TAB and add it to the iGTD inbox.

Perhaps it sounds a bit overwhelming (or not), but it feels very natural once you start using it.

From my Palm, my Apple mail, just free format (QuickSilver or F7 Quick Enter), my browser or iGTD itself: with a few keystrokes I got it stored in iGTD and it syncs across the applications (Palm, iCal and iGTD)

However I set the iGTD syncing to “sync when losing focus” otherwise I would need an extra manual iGTD sync.

In practice

So when:

  • I’m asked to give my Divemaster number and insurance number in the swimming pool, I scribble a task on my Palm…. and forget about it
  • I receive a mail, which I should review later and act upon I press F6 inside Apple Mail…and forget about it.
  • I receive a IM message saying I should look at S3browse. I briefly look at it, decide to give it the attention it needs later, press F6 in my browser….and forget about it.
  • Suddenly think that I should really check the ATG Cactus patch. Hit Apple-Space to select QuickSilver, do some neat key presses and …forget about it…

A simple Sync on my Palm and everything is Synced and I can review it later.

Sweet Mac integration.

Let’s see if I get more things done…. Less insomnia would be nice too.

3 Comments | GTD, iCal, iGTD, Mac OS X, Mail, MailTags, Palm, QuickSilver | Permalink
Posted by Ronald Pulleman

Parallels 3.0

June 8, 2007

Parallels have just released version 3.0 for Mac OS X

We now have Parallel Tools voor Linux distro’s as well. The mouse now works just as smooth as it did with Windows. Great!

And the Parallels Snapshot manager seems nifty too.

EDIT:

But the fact that SmartSelect feature takes over the file extensions from Mac native MS Office documents to is really dumb. You can reset it in the info panel of Finder of course, but I shouldn’t have to do that, that’s bad practice.

Fedora with Parallels 3.0

Leave a Comment » | Mac OS X, Parallels | Permalink
Posted by Ronald Pulleman

Fixing ACC “Preview site using profile” on Mac OS X

April 11, 2007

The Preview Site Using Profile functionality from the ACC does not work out of the box on Mac OS X. This is functionality which is really nice to have so you can preview the JSP page with a specific profile.

Because we are using the Linux installer on Mac OS X, I was unsure how the browser was started when you pressed preview. I did a global grep and noticed the showurl.sh containing the script to start the browser. This contains code to either startup Mozilla or Netscape. This will not work of course. So we need to change this. However before this can be done another step is needed.

Firefox new instance

Starting Firefox from the command line will not work if Firefox is already started. If somebody knows a way to open an already started Firefox with an URL I would really like to know.

Unknown to most people, but you can start Firefox for a second time with another Firefox profile.

To create a Firefox profile I did the folowing:

ls <firefox path>/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS

./firefox -Profilemanager
And created a new firefox profile. I named mine atg.

Change showurl.sh

Then I altered the showurl.sh and added the following line

/<firefox path>/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -p atg ${1}

And behold: It just works™

Leave a Comment » | ATG, Firefox, Mac OS X | Permalink
Posted by Ronald Pulleman

MySQL preference pane

April 5, 2007

When using the MySQL preference pane to start and stop MySQL on my Mac, I was not quickly able to find which script was actually run. This was not configurable. Find and grep did not help me.

It seems that the prefpane goes to /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server and does a start and stop

Since I use a couple of MySQL versions, setting your symbolic link becomes really important.

Leave a Comment » | Mac OS X, MySQL | Permalink
Posted by Ronald Pulleman

SolidDB Storage Engine

March 29, 2007

The ATG Creating Commerce Applications course uses the Solid Embedded Engine. So ofcourse when trying to run the Solid Sql scripts in my MySQL database it fails on the following line:

alter table dynamusic_item_bought set pessimistic

This is only natural since this is a typical Solid statement. When googling to see how I can translate this to MySQL syntax I stumble on the SolidDB Storage Engine for MySQL . He this is new! So when I use MySQL with this storage engine will it accept my SQL statement? I have no idea. I am completely in the dark how MySQL and its storage engines actually work. But hey let’s give it a try. Unfortunately there is only a Windows and a Linux version. But somebody on the net compiled the sources for the PowerPC mac and had created a Mac build. Hoorah.

However the following code fails:

CREATE TABLE `Fiets1` (
`id` varchar(11) NOT NULL , PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=solidDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

But this one works

CREATE TABLE `Fiets1` (
`id` INTEGER NOT NULL , PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=solidDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

It seems that I cannot do a primary key on a varchar. That’s odd.

Next step is to compile the stuff myself. However although I’m perfectly able to compile the MySQL sources from mysql.org on my MacBook, I get a compile error when downloading the linux sources from the solid website. Must be my inexperience. Solid forums.

So now I’m on Parallels for the remainder :-( ….

Leave a Comment » | ATG, Mac OS X, MySQL, Solid | Permalink
Posted by Ronald Pulleman

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.