As mentioned in an earlier post on using faux Contacts for collecting, managing, and synching tasks offline on the iPhone, I've been reading Getting things done (GTD) by David Allen. I have to say I found the book a difficult, overly repetitive and non-engaging read, despite my motivation to learn from it. If you could get a lot of things done in the time it takes to read 267 anecdote-heavy pages, here's my somewhat condensed take on the bits worth sharing, along with a few Mac-specific embellishments.
Continue reading 'Personal productivity on Mac and iPhone'
Archive
Be Unlimited provide ADSL2+ services in the UK, supplying a Be-branded Thompson SpeedTouch wireless router called the BeBox. The Member Forum is full of complaints about router instability and errant behaviour. My 780WL had been doing well for around 6 months, then started resetting itself sometimes several times within a short period, but at least daily. Sometimes after a reset I was left with no Internet connectivity. Eventually Be sent me a replacement router, which came with replacement problems. So how do you turn a flaky BeBox into a rock-solid Internet router? Just take the "Be" out of your BeBox.
Continue reading 'Resolving router issues with Be Unlimited'
Just bought a new TomTom with a 30-day latest map guarantee? Don't download any map update as prompted by TomTom HOME on the day you register your device. Why not? Because if TomTom do release a new map in 30 days time, you won't be allowed to download it. You may still be within 30 days, but you will have the map that was current on the day you got your device. If, however, you carefully count to day 30 before downloading any map updates, you will get the latest map as of that time. The ambiguous guarantee is not for the latest map within 30 days—it's for a map within that period.
Continue reading 'TomTom latest map guarantee trap'
Over the past 16 years I've had the pleasure of being responsible for eight well-used Macs and associated hardware. In that time I've seen the failure of one display, one hard drive (thankfully post-TM), one power supply, and now one logic board. So what are your choices when a piece of kit fails? For most people the options considered will be either fixing it (until they get a quote), or replacing it. But there may be at least two more choices worthy of consideration: sharing a Mac, or rethinking what you actually need from a computer and recycling pre-loved equipment. Older equipment can be like older people: once you get past a certain point it's evidence of good genes! I'd bet my PowerBook 100 of 1992 vintage would still boot if it had any juice in the battery. Here's how we looked to the past to save money, and in so doing saved an ancient (i.e. any computer over 3 years old) iMac from premature retirement.
Continue reading 'Rethink, reuse, recycle'
Another former communist-occupied country visited, another monument to the fallen photographed. How did communism's lofty ideal of equality become so twisted and evil, delivering oppression and brutality wherever it was (or is) practised? Having seen the poignant sculpture in Moscow commemorating Stalin's victims, and the collected skulls from the Killing Fields of Pol Pot's Cambodia, I wasn't expecting to find a similar memorial in the Czech Republic so moving. But death is only one way you can hurt people: how do you physically capture the dissolution of a man's spirit?
Continue reading 'The incredible dissolution of being'
When you inadvertently write a cheque from the wrong account putting said account into overdraft, you expect to pay for your mistake. But would you expect to pay four different charges, incurring a total liability in fees nearly four times the size of the overdraft—even though it was rectified within 6 working days? If you bank with Halifax, who always give you extra, you can indeed.
Continue reading 'Unarranged overdraft bank charges'
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