Tips and Tricks About Computers, Web Development, Linux, the Internet and the Like
Organization
The Simple Organizer
Dec 30th
I’ve always had some trouble staying organized in real life (IRL). I think part of the reason is that other people’s methods don’t really work for me.
This tool is designed to help me deal with ‘mind overflow’. That is, more information than my brain is willing to process at one time. An organizer of sorts. That is what I consider my project to be. It is neither a notepad or a day planner, a scribble pad or a journal; it is what you need it to be, fast.
Used in conjunction with its bigger brother, who we’ll call ‘Homebase’, the device ‘Soldier’ is a fully customizable, expandable, archivable, seperatable ‘mind overflow system’.
Soldier is able to hold ~10-30 pages of 3 ringed paper 3.5″x5.5″. He can find relief from older documents by redistributing them to Homebase.
Notice the pen on the outside edge. This is intentionally done for quick access to the pen when TSO is closed.
Doctypes and why I never really gave a crap
Dec 10th
To me, doctypes have always been somewhat of a hassle. I know when I write good code and I know how to fix errors the validator spits out at me. Other than that, my knowledge is limited. I usually just copy the header from my older documents and hope for the best. However, yesterday I had a change of heart and thanks to a simple google search, that led me to a great article, that brought me to a not so easily found page on w3. I was able to sigh in relief. I really don’t understand why the chart below isn’t easily accessible.
This chart is located about half way down the page.
According to my purple to blue link ratio, there are no links off the front page of w3 to this article. I find this rather inconvenient. Thankfully, the good folks at ALA know what’s up.
Organizing Your Email on the Fly
Dec 8th
Email can be a hassle but it doesn’t have to be if you lay out the ground work properly. Folders are a great solution but they only bring you so far. I know I don’t want to manually sort all my email. If you’re like me, you’ll love thunderbird’s filters and tags. Filters allow you to sort, delete, tag and so much more automagically.
To get started, click tools > message filters…
And you are brought to a dialog similar to this (mine obviously has a few filters):
Click ‘new…’ to get started.
In this dialog, conditions are defined at the top and actions are defined below. In the example above, you’ll notice that my condition is based on the Subject of the email. When this condition is true, it will perform the actions below. Move to the BOA folder and tag the message as important.
A little note about this window that confuses people, those + and – buttons are to add and remove conditions/actions. You do not need to click + if you are just filling in the one field, thunderbird knows it’s there.
Also note, Thunderbird allows you to add your own tags with a nice array of colors to choose from (though I would prefer hex).
To access this dialog, click the tag button on the tool bar and select ‘new…’
If you have any questions, feel free to leave a message. Happy sorting!
Bookmark Organization
Dec 6th
Bookmarks are something most of us don’t really keep up to par. Sometimes you just ctrl+d on a whim, losing that page in your lack of a hierarchy forever. Well, at least that’s how it’s been for me. However, once in a while I give myself a kick in the ass and try to shape up. Based upon the patterns I’ve learned in the past and the general direction I wish to go, I reevaluate my mess and decide the proper way forward. In this case it was the standard, “Make general categories and add sub-folders if they need more organization” route… with a little extra spice.
This time around, I decided to utilize folders in the bookmarks toolbar. Maybe I’m blind to this but I feel like most people don’t utilize this helpful feature, I know I didn’t until now. After spending a few days using folders on my toolbar, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is both effective and efficient.
I spend a lot of time developing locally and often do rounds on my live sites and rather than waste 4 seconds typing in a 32 character URL, I’d rather waste 0.4 making two clicks. Yes, that’s right, I’m shaving off seconds to increase my efficiency. It might not seem like a lot but it adds up to minutes a day and hours a year.
Now, because I’m going to be spending a lot of time on my laptop, I needed a global solution to my bookmarks. The path I chose to get is syncing them with the Firefox extension, Bookmark Sync and Sort. If you don’t have your own server, there are some hosted alternatives such as Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer. Those trendy bookmark sites aren’t really the solution for me for a few reasons.
1) I like to control my data.
2) Those sites are usually distracting to me
3) While the Firefox bookmarks manager isn’t the ideal solution, the GUI is far more advanced than something you’ll find on a social bookmarking site.
Admittedly, there is an advantage to these sites, and that’s the fact that I can get to my bookmarks quickly no matter what computer I’m on. But again, I can argue that I can find a link just as fast (if not faster) with SSH by greping the xml file Bookmark Sync and Sort generates.
Back on track, once you have the extension installed, click ‘Bookmarks’ > ‘Synchronize Bookmarks’ and fill in the dialog with your information as such:
What kind of man would I be if I didn’t take advantage of this moment to sort my bookmarks?
Mmm, alphabetical order.
Now I just need to upkeep as best I can… I’ll let you know when I come up with a better solution for that. Right now, I just force myself to take the time to find the correct folder in the hierarchy. It’s a good habit but a hard one to keep. If you have any advice, please share. Good luck and happy bookmarking.
P.S. I edited the file wp-admin/admin-functions.php, line 2126 to increase the generated thumbnail size in wordpress. Just replace ’128′ with the max you wish. Thought maybe some of you could use that information.
