Quite the question, is it not? Not an easy one to approach without squirming in the seat a bit.

These days I feel pulled in so many directions. It’s not that I haven’t always been, it’s that now I have a greater realization of this whirlpool momentum. I have a more intimate understanding of the value of an hour and the worth of a hundred dollars. I see the inexorable way in which these small details add up. I sense how the big catastrophes and successes are nothing more than accumulated decisions and moments. I see how, when viewed in reverse, they form a mammoth shape that becomes its own entity, obscuring the bits and pieces that culminated into the moment of change.

Thinking on this topic leaves me with the inevitable feeling that so much of my time is wasted. This is not because the activities I choose are not worthy of pursuit. This is not because the efforts are vain or misguided. This is because they are diluted; because the difference between a good effort, a great effort, and a masterful effort are subtle details accumulated over time. Focusing them into a single pile, if you’ll entertain the metaphor, produces a single, massive result. Dividing them over many areas gently coats the surface but never amounts to a grand outcome.

My humility would argue that this is also a fine result and that the purpose of my efforts cannot be fully understood while immersed in the moment, with only one piece of the puzzle to examine. At the same time, I understand that visibility is power and power is not merely a force of evil. Power is the authority to invoke change. Change is the opportunity (and burden) to invoke a greater purpose in oneself and those touched by my words. But without creating a theater for my work, I cannot hope to achieve any lasting influence.

Thus, my scattered efforts and interests, my many loyalties, keep me from building the pillar upon which I could stand, visible to my audience, and offer what I have to say. And perhaps this is part of the Greater Plan. Perhaps this is for the Greater Good. For who is to say that anything I would offer would be more beneficial than destructive to those who would listen? Certainly I can’t claim such wisdom, standing here with one piece of an infinite puzzle, speculating on how the picture might turn out, based on which way I turn my pegs and slots.

Since brainstorming and outlining are such important activities for writers, I am cross-posting this article about Mind Mapping Tools from my tech blog.

Give it a peek.

It is not the critic who counts; Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; Who strives valiantly;

Who errs, and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; But who does actually strive to do the deeds; Who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; Who spends himself in a worthy cause;

Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worse, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

-Theodore Roosevelt

I’m on my second day of full time dvorak and it’s been hard hard hard.   I loose all ability to type whenever I think hard, and music is out of the question.  Bleaaargh…

I set writing goals with Authoress today. We’ve agreed to write for at least one hour every day, or else.   Or else?  That’s right…

The terms for success we agreed to:

• Write, draft, or revise at least 1 hour, mon – fri
• Record progress by logging start/stop times in twitter
• If we miss a day, we agree to write an excuse free, embarrassing apology to all our twitter friends. Yarr!

Additionally, I’ve agreed to do my writing in the mornings since that’s the only way I can be sure it will get done.

We’re trying this out for the next two weeks, so be sure to cheer us on; and, be doubly sure to mock us if we slack.

So far, things are progressing very quickly.  In my first fifteen minute session, I was able to memorize a, o, e, r, m, n, t, i, u, and s.  I also get several other keys right at least 50% of the time.  So my first impressions:

• this may not be as much suffering as I thought
• it’s really comfortable — almost no finger travel
• balances letter combinations between fingers/hands very well
• punctuation and symbols will take getting used to
• seems like U and I should be reversed

I’ve considered dvorak before. However, today, after reading a lifehack article on the topic, I decided to convert to the dvorak layout for one month. After, I will evaluate the usefulness and decide if I switch or return to qwerty.

My goals are:

• Increased efficiency: Dvorak seems much more efficient and I’m all for ‘rocking the boat’ when the boat is leaking.
• Decreased wrist pain: I have chronic wrist pain from years of martial arts coupled with years of computer work. I’m hoping the decreased movements of the dvorak layout will help.
• Learning something new: I haven’t been devloping any new skills of late, and it’s time to start growing as a person. As Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding said so well, “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

My plan of attack is as follows:

• Not a good measure of typing speed – words you type become muscle memory after time, and the combinations offered by keybr are not commonly used words.
• The lack of commonly used words reinforces hard combinations and prevents me from only becoming proficient at the easy combinations. Very good.
• Only works in IE — and I am not a fan of the M$ junkpile bug-fest that it is.
• Has dvorak oriented lessons which target dvorak combinations specifically
• Displays an on-screen keyboard to prevent looking at hands while typing.

Alright all you Critique Circle and gamer addicts. Finally a tool for you.

Slife records not only which applications you use on your computer, but how long you spend on specific websites and emails. It can give you a good marker for how much time you are spending writing vs. browsing forums, twittering vs. nano-ing.

It also allows you to put a limit on how long you spend in an app or web site on a given day.

So why chart how you spend your time? Just like budgeting your money and tracking your expenses, it encourages you to use it more wisely. It’s easy not to think about how much time or money we spend on a certain distraction, but when it’s in front of you, and you can see that it’s taking up a third of your time and money, it’s hard to ignore.

And by nature, we’re competitive creatures. We like to achieve things. If you can just get that “writing bar” to top 100…

It’s completely private and customizable in what it records. It’s also free.

RTM is a very slick todo list app that has extremely nice hotkeys and simple interface. Using launchy, it’s possible to connect to RTM to Launchy and create new tasks from your desktop. However, I wasn’t able to get this working, despite the excellent guide.

I spent several hours trying, but I just can’t seem to get stunnel to play with gmail. Externally, it just sort of hangs up for a while.

Read more… »