procrastination begone!

I've decided it's time to start 'getting things done'.

I'm starting with my personal life - and on Sat I'm going to a trial day at the gym for the first time since university (!). It's ultra handy to us too - on the next street! I'm hoping I can keep it up for the next year - I really need to get healthier.

Next on the list is sorting out wedding stuff - I know we have a year to get it all done, but when you're doing it from overseas (we're getting married in NZ) it's not as easy as just looking in the phone book and going around to see someone. Most of the big stuff is done (venue - they sort the food & drink & photographer), but I'm sure there are heaps of things I haven't even thought about that need to be reserved/bought ages in advance.

What next? Sort out my career (ahem if you can call it that!)? Do all those little annoying jobs at work that I've been putting off? Hmmmm.

Smoko

When working in government (and sometimes private) business in NZ, there is an almost ingrained concept called 'smoko' that I am starting to miss.

Often known as morning/afternoon tea break (and I guess 'smoko' is a bit of an archaic term, given the anti-smoking sentiment in NZ!), it's basically a semi-enforced 30min break at 10am and 3pm, usually in a common room somewhere. It probably has it's roots in the days when tea ladies physically served the tea, so if you weren't there, you missed out. In the government research labs I worked at in Wellington, smoko was something that everyone usually went to unless you were in the middle of an experiment/procedure that you couldn't put down, and it became less of a tea break, and more of somewhere to collaborate with other lab groups. A lot of decisions (formal and informal) were made, and 'political' type stuff (as it's a lot about who you know in the NZ science community) went on. It also helped with time management, as the day was split into four managable sections rather than two long ones - in my role as a research assistant, it made my life easy in planning what tasks I could fit in each of those four segments.

Whereas in the UK from what I've seen - working in both software houses, and teams that provide internal software services to various different business (finance, ecommerce, travel, local government), tea breaks either don't happen, or consist of someone in the team getting everyone their tea - so you rarely move from your desk unless you're in a meeting, lunch, or it's your turn for the coffee/tea round. And as a contractor, I've seen some employers go as far as trying to make contractors clock in and out for their 'smoko' breaks - even when they're a bona-fide cig smoker off for their 5 min fag out the back in some smelly alley way next to the rubbish bins yeuck!

I think we should campaign to bring back smoko! I think we all need more social interaction with our colleagues, and time away from our desks - possibly helping to prevent OOS/RSI, and sometimes even increasing productivity.

[Image from flickr - creative commons licence. Thanks Nick.]

Colibri - quicksilver for windows

Just found Colibri and am running it on my work PC (doesn't need admin rights to install, yay!). It's kindof like quicksilver (which I LOVE on my mac) for windows - not as fully featured, but does the basics. Doesn't have much 'OS' integration tho which I use a lot on my mac (empty trash, reboot, log out etc) as far as I can tell, tho that functionality might be hiding somewhere.

But it's great for simple things like launching google searches, start up apps, controlling volume, open up some system prefs, all with a coupla keyboard strokes.

ie to search google:
- hit ctrl+space to get the colibri dialog to open
- type goo (by then it's worked out i'm lookin for google)
- hit tab
- type the search term
- hit enter
And it opens the default internet browser and runs the google search. Easier than all that mouse clickin and tabbin around.

Looks like customising search paths etc is a bit ugly, as there is no nice interface to doing this yet - have to install sql lite browser and modify the sql db entries which is fine for someone like me, but impossible for the 'average' business user. They have an active community forum - will have to do a bit of reading and see whats goin down.

Can also be installed on a usb key - so the user database(s) are installed there too. That's a nice feature.

I found a nice theme to run also- 'tordo'. The default one is fine however.

[found via lifehacker]