Month: September 2005

GTDTiddlyWiki

I’m cursed with being both obsessive compulsive and dangerously apathetic, so I’m drawn to things like personal organizers, but never actually use them, even though I, of all people, should. The truth is that none of them really appealed to me; writing on paper is so bulky and difficult to edit, and because so much of my life is spent online, I really should use some kind of software. But most programs I’ve found have way too many features and/or cost money and/or take up too much memory to be able to run all the time, which would be necessary if I’m ever going to pay attention to the details of my life.

I played around with a simple html to do list that I kept as my home page, but literally for months I would just ignore it on my way to AllMusic or wherever. It was too inflexible.

Then wikis were created, and they seemed to be the ideal platform for personal organization. Unfortunately I lacked the knowledge it would require to implement wiki architecture in that way. But finally somebody’s done this for me with GTDTiddlyWiki. This is nothing more than a modified version of TiddlyWiki, but I use it because it looks nicer. It’s a little hard to understand how to use it initially, but it’s quickly become clear that it’s both flexible and light enough for my purposes. It resides as a single html file on your hard drive, your thumb drive, or wherever, and runs on CSS and JavaScript. It’s really beautiful.

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bag 2.0 (part 1)

Well, since I don’t usually have much to write about anyway, why don’t I chronicle the making of my new messenger bag?

bag1.0This is my current bag. I sewed it with a needle and thread by hand in the summer of 2003. I don’t know how many dozens of hours it took me to make. I used duck cloth from Jo-Ann Fabrics that ended up being too light (you can almost ball the whole thing up into your hand), there are massive fraying problems, it’s not quite big enough, the snaps on the left pocket are virtually useless (half of one is missing), and the shoulder strap is too long (meaning when I ride my bike with it the bag keeps getting caught on my ass). It’s served me well for two years, but last year I decided it was time for a new one, which I’m just now beginning.

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