Author: Andrew Huey

GTD Connect

I’m almost embarrassed to admit this, but I signed up for GTD Connect this week. GTD Connect is David Allen’s subscription service for GTD aficionados. It costs $48 per month, which is a good deal more than I’m accustomed to spending on a web-based service of any kind. I’m planning on trying it out until the end of the year, then re-evaluating it and making a decision on whether or not it’s worth sticking with.

For anyone else out there who might be considering it, I thought I might put together a write-up on what you get through the service. I did a bit of web searching before I signed up, and found a bunch of blog posts on the service back when it just started up, but I haven’t seen much mention of it anywhere recently, so I wasn’t sure how it was shaping up. It looks like it launched about a year ago (August 2006), so now is probably a good time to take a look at it and try to see what it delivered in its first year.

Here’s my take on the service as it exists right now, with the caveat that I’ve only been playing with it for a few days.

While the service is primarily web-based, there is a monthly mailing that goes out to members. The original intention was to do eight audio interview CDs a year and four issues of GTD Quarterly (a newsletter on GTD), so each month, you’d get one or the other. There have only been two issues of the newsletter so far, but there have been some extra CDs sent out, so there’s been something mailed out each month either way. All the past mailing material is out on the web site so new members can download any of the older stuff in MP3 or PDF format.

I downloaded the two newsletters. The first is 16 pages and the second is 20. There’s some good material in there; maybe a little fluff, but overall good stuff. Many of the articles are similar in length and tone to the essays in “Ready for Anything”, for those who have read that book. Some of the articles are less philosophical and more practical.

There’s a podcast feed with all the past audio material, both the interview CDs, and a bunch of other material. If you subscribe to the feed in iTunes, and pull down everything on it, you’ll get about 700 MB worth of audio and video (mostly audio). The videos are just short 2 minute segments with David talking about a single topic. There’s about 30 hours worth of audio out there. (There are some longer videos up on the site that aren’t in the podcast feed.)

The web site includes a couple of interesting features. First, you can set up a weekly e-mail reminder about your weekly review. That’s pretty simple; you just pick the day of the week you want to receive the reminder. The e-mail you get will have a few encouraging words from David, so it’s a bit more than just a simple reminder. Second, there’s something called the “Intention Journal” which is basically an open-ended e-mail reminder system that you can use for anything you want. It has a bunch of GTD-related categories, and suggestions about the kind of things you should use them for, but you can really use it in any way you like. The whole e-mail reminder thing is something you could likely do just as well (and a lot cheaper) with Backpack or Remember the Milk. It’s nice to have a GTD-focused system, though, so you’ve got a framework for figuring out the kinds of things you want to get reminders on.

There are also members-only forums on the Connect site. That’s all done through the same system as the public forums at www.davidco.com/forum/, so if you’ve seen those, you’ll know what to expect. Given the $48/month buy-in, there’s a better signal-to-noise ratio on these forums than probably anywhere else on the internet. You really don’t get trolls or spammers, for obvious reasons. It’s really refreshing to go through the forum messages, and see a bunch of on-topic posts written largely by people who know how to write, and spell, and think.

There are a few other things going on with Connect, but I think that covers the main stuff. Is it worth $48/month? I’m not sure yet. If it was $10/month, I’d say yes, definitely. I can easily wrap my head around the idea of paying around $100 a year for something like this. But paying more like $500 a year is a hard sell.

inbox (not quite) zero

The last time I blogged about GTD, I was down to 632 messages in my inbox. I got that down to 92 today, probably the first time it’s been under 100 in a long while. (It’s back *over* 100 now, of course, but hopefully I’ll get it cleaned up a bit more tomorrow.) Meanwhile, I’ve been using the To-Do section of my mail file to track my projects and next actions and whatnot. That’s working out OK, but it’s not the most flexible system I could have. I may go back to the GTD for Lotus Notes database, and give that another try.

And I watched Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero video this week. There’s not much new there, really, for anyone who’s already well-versed in GTD, but it’s interesting. I’d recommend watching it, if your inbox is a bit out of control and you’re looking for some help.

Hitchhiker’s Guide

“This must be Thursday,” said Arthur musing to himself, sinking low over his beer, “I never could get the hang of Thursdays.” — see Wikiquote for many more Hitchhiker’s quotes.

I started listening to the audiobook version of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy today. It’s read by Stephen Fry. He does a great job with it. I last read the book back in high school, probably, but I still remember a lot of the dialogue. Great stuff. It really made the commute into work today much more pleasant than usual.

And Stephen Fry lends his voice to this alarm clock too, which is pretty amusing.

FreeNAS

I’m still working on setting up a NAS server for our new Pennsylvania office. I gave up on OpenFiler in favor of FreeNAS today. There’s nothing wrong with OpenFiler, per se, but it just wasn’t looking like it would work well for what I needed. FreeNAS looks just about perfect, though. I was a little reticent about using it, at first, since it’s based on BSD rather than Linux, and I’m just not that well-versed in BSD. It doesn’t seem like you need to know much about the underlying OS, though.

Ratatouille

A friend gave me some zucchini from his garden, so I’ve decided to try making some ratatouille. I’ve never even eaten ratatouille, never mind cooked it, but it seems like something I should try. There are quite a few recipes out there on the internet: the weird one from the Pixar film, an interesting, but time-consuming, one here, one with mushrooms over here, and what I’m guessing is a tradional French version here. I think I’m going to go with something that’s kind of a combination of recipes from two cookbooks I’ve got here at home.

open source stuff

My company is setting up a new (small) office in Pennsylvania, and I’m thinking about using some Linux stuff down there. I’m planning on using IPCop for the firewall, and maybe Openfiler for a NAS.

I’ve been using IPCop in our main office for the last few years, so I’ve got no doubts about that, and I’m quite familiar with it. I’ve never used Openfiler though, or any other open source NAS package. I considered putting an old Dell PowerEdge box running Windows 2000 Server down there, but I’m not really enthusiastic about that; it’s an old box, and an old OS, and I don’t really need all the overhead of a full Windows server. Nor do I want to pop for a Windows 2003 Server. I just need a place to put shared files for a small workgroup. I’m hoping Openfiler works well for that, and is easy to access from a Windows XP client. I’ve been looking at the Openfiler forums, and I think this thread may prove helpful. I haven’t actually gotten around to installing OF on a box yet. I downloaded it Friday afternoon, but I mistakenly downloaded the 64-bit version, and I didn’t realize that until after 5pm on Friday, so I left my machine downloading the 32-bit ISO and went home. I’ll give it a try on Monday.

comic-con Sunday

Well, comic-con is over and done with for this year. Today was pretty mellow. I went to three panels — a DC panel, the second Cartoon Voices panel, and an “Art of the Cover” panel. All were great. Only the voice panel was uncomfortably crowded. I didn’t buy anything at the con today though, other than coffee. I feel kind of bad about that, but really, I’ve got plenty of stuff in my reading pile at home right now. The last thing I need is more books to read! Over the course of the con, I think I bought just three trade paperbacks, and several toys, most of which are for other people. I think this is the least amount of stuff I’ve ever bought at the con.

The NY Times actually has an article about the con. A decade ago, I wouldn’t have imagined an article about comic-con showing up in the NY Times; now, it’s really not that surprising. The article concentrates on the Hollywood stuff, mostly, which I completely skipped out on this year. I didn’t go to either Stargate panel, the BSG panel, or any of the movie studio panels. I never saw the inside of Hall H or Room 20 at all this year.

comic-con Saturday

Once again, I seem to find myself back in my hotel room early. I went to Mark Evanier’s “Quick Draw” and “Cartoon Voices” panels this morning. Both were great. Neither was overcrowded, or hard to get into. There was a DC panel right after the Cartoon Voices panel, in the same room, and I was going to stay for that, but I decided to make a trip to the bathroom, then try to get back into the room. That was a mistake; there was a big line to get into the room, so I gave up and wandered the floor a bit. Then, I went upstairs to try and get into a different panel, but I got there a few minutes late, and they’d filled the room already. I wandered around some more, then decided to go for a late lunch. I got myself a turkey sandwich and a beer, then headed back to the hotel, and here I am, blogging and enjoying the peace and quiet.

There’s an interesting article about the fire marshall over at Sign On San Diego. The photo they ran with it is a bit misleading, though. At first glance, it looks like she’s dressed as Prof. McGonagall. When you look at the picture more closely, though, you realize that she’s in the background, wearing her uniform, and the woman in the foreground is a random Harry Potter fan. (They couldn’t have managed a picture with the subject of the article in the foreground?) Either way, they’re doing a pretty good job of crowd control at the con, given the circumstances. I have to admit that I long for the days when I could just walk into any random panel five minutes late, and still get a good seat, though.

comic con – Saturday morning

I’m not sure whose wifi I’m using right now, but it’s working OK, so I’m spending a bit of time this morning browsing the blogs and news sites. A lot happened at the con yesterday, apparently. CBR has a whole bunch of stories up.

I have no idea what I’m going to do today. There are probably twenty different panels I’d like to attend, but, like yesterday, I’ll be lucky if I can get to two or three. Hopefully, I’ll have more energy than I did yesterday, though.

comic con day two

I had a pretty light day today. I gave blood in the morning, then went into the con and saw Paul Dini’s panel. Then, I wandered the floor a bit. Later, I went to Neil Gaiman’s panel. I was tired after that, and things were getting crowded, so I gave up and went back to the hotel, stopping for a burger at the Hard Rock. I was going to go back to the con for some of the evening stuff, but I’m just too beat right now, so I’m hanging out in the hotel room watching Torchwood. I guess the blood donation took more out of me than usual.