August 20, 2007

Enough Gear Already

It seems that in addition to collecting guitars, computer hardware, digital cameras, unused calendars, planning systems and black Cordura bags I’ve also gotten stuck collecting blogging and social networking accounts. Plaxo, Linkedin, Flickr, Flixster, Facebook, Jaiku, Twitter, etc, etc. plus all the little plug-ins for cross-posting and integration.

It appears it’s about time for a “code freeze” of sorts: That’s it. No more new systems. No more changes. It’s time to actually make music, take pictures, and write.

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February 21, 2007

Making a Hipster PDA Case

Finished Card HolderLike many folks I fell onto the GTD bandwagon about a year ago after stumbling upon 43folders.com. One thing led to another, and pretty quickly I found myself carrying a Hipster PDA, better know to anybody over thirty as “a stack of index cards.” A traditional hPDA is held together with a binder clip, but that just didn’t work for me. The clip would catch on things, the card edges would fray, and it just didn’t seem like an elegant solution to me. I’d look for something better whenever I was in an office supply store, but never did find anything that seemed quite right. Finally, I decided I’d just try to make something, and after 5 minutes in Office Depot and 10 minutes with a paper cutter I had what I wanted: a clear plastic holder that didn’t add any substantial thickness or bulk but protected the cards and provided easy access. After a few months, the holder was looking a bit ragged, so I thought it was time to make a new one. Here’s the process Read the rest of this entry »

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June 5, 2006

Outlook “Sent Items” Hack

For years, Outlook’s inability to have Sent Items go anywhere but the Sent Items folder has been a little pet peeve of mine. It might seem a little counterintuitive, but I really like everything I send to end up in my inbox where I sort it, file it, set up a “next action” ala GTD, etc. Up until now I’d just move the contents of my Sent Items folder to the Inbox folder every once in a while. Well, reading CNXN’s article on using Outlooks without folders finally gave me a bit of a nudge, and a quick google turned up the following bit of code. Open Outlook’s Visual Basic editor, go to the ThisOutlookSession object, paste in the following code, save, restart Outlook, and anything that appears in Sent Items will immediately be moved ot the Inbox.

Public WithEvents SentItems As Outlook.Items
Private Sub Application_Startup()
    Set SentItems = _
Outlook.Session.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderSentMail).Items
End Sub
Private Sub Application_Quit()
    Set SentItems = Nothing
End Sub
Private Sub SentItems_ItemAdd(ByVal Item As Object)
    Item.Move _
Outlook.Session.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox)
End Sub
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