Archived entries for organizational skills

Syncing my iPod Touch with Google Calendar.

As I’ve been doing more to organize my life on area I’ve been having issues with was keeping my iPod Touch filled with all the relevant information it needed to keep going.  As long as I was syncing my touch with my Mac laptop this wasn’t much of a problem.  iCal reliably sync’d up with my Google calendars, but recently I’ve begun syncing my Touch with my PC desktop.  I found some instructions for turning the box the Touch comes in in to a dock.  I hate plugging and unplugging devices all the time so setting the dock up with my PC desktop made things more convenient for me and my little evolving home office.  However since there is no iCal for Windows I needed to find another way to keep my Touch up-to-date with my Google calendars.

I looked at some apps for the iPod Touch, but most were either costly, weren’t the greatest of calendars, were overly complex and relied on accounts with too many different services, or just plain sucked.  Recently I found a website, ironically it’s one of Google’s, that has step-by-step instructions for syncing the calendar on the iPod Touch with Google Calendar.  It uses the Exchange Server syncing ability of the Touch/iPhone platform to connect with your “calendar in the cloud”.  Unlike some of the other options it allows two way syncing over the air, so you’re not required to be connected to your computer in order to retrieve updated calendar information.  When I inputted a new entry on my iPod Touch, then checked iCal on my laptop less than a minute later the new entry appeared there.  Sure, you can just access your Google Calendars using mobile Safari, but if you don’t have an internet connection handy (or if you have an iPhone and you’re not in an area where you can get a signal) you can still have access to your calendar information.  This is why I prefer having an app as opposes as a purely web-based service.  It also sync’s your contacts as well.

I can’t say why I didn’t think of actually checking Google’s website first for a solution.  The iPhone OS has been around for awhile now and I can’t believe there wouldn’t be other people out there looking for the same thing that I was.  Now, however, I have all my devices sharing information between one another so that I can have my most updated information whether at home or on the road.

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Today’s Word is Calendar!

I figured the best place to start when it comes to getting my day to day life together was with a calendar.  While it’s such a simple tool it is also an invaluable one, and one of the only task oriented tools that I’ve regularly used.  Although my schedule is generally fairly open having an up-to-date calendar is quite helpful during hockey season – the one time of year in which my life leans a little more towards the busy side.  With my flaky memory it’s nice to be able to glance up and say, “Oh yeah, I’ve got that thing coming up at the end of the week.”

I’ve always used Apple’s iCal on my laptop which conveniently syncs up with my iPod Touch that I use as a PDA.  The problem with that, since I don’t have their MobileMe account, is that if I needed to access it via a different terminal there was no way to do so.  While this was never a real issue to me it has become more of one lately now that I’ve added another computer in to my daily mix(a salvaged Windows XP box).  Google Calendar seemed like a good solution, the only problem for awhile being that, without paying for third party solutions, it was virtually impossible to reliably sync it with the touch.  Also, I missed the UI of iCal, preferring it much more than Google’s interface.  Fortunately Google has made some changes recently and there is a very simple method for two way syncing with iCal now.  Unfortunately there’s no good way to merge calendars.  You have to use the calendars created in the Google Calendar as your primary ones.  As far as I can tell the only way of combining the two is by doing it manually.  Fortunately, as of late, I had very little on my calendar so it wasn’t much of a chore – still I can see this being an issue for someone who already has a well filled out calendar on iCal.  The only other downside I’ve discovered is there is no syncing of the ToDo list (but I’ll cover more on this in a separate post).

So now I’m up and running with calendaring, being able to share it reliably across all the machines and devices that I use, plus having a web interface that I can access from any terminal with an internet connection.  The best part is it is all for free!

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A Method to the Madness.

One would assume now that I have more free time on my hands it would be easier to get back in to writing – even if only something as simple as more frequent updates to this site.  The truth is its actually been a bit harder to get back in to the writing habit on any level.  Part of it probably stems from the fact that I haven’t written regularly in quite awhile so I’m still a bit rusty about getting the things out of my head and on to “paper”.  The other reason is right now faced with so much free time my brain has scattered to the four corners.  I try to do too much all at once, and that just gets terribly exhausting.  This is even more apparent when I’ve tried to sit down and actually write something.  I’ve become too rushed with it, especially when attempting a blog post of any substance.  It’s like playing a game of speed chess, I have this ticking clock and I have to get the next sentence out before the time buzzes.  There’s no time to think, only type, I’ve got to do it right now!  This runs contrary to what I would have thought it would be like when presented with all this extra time.  The end result is that I end up with writing that feels very forced and in several instances doesn’t even convey what I had intended.

The way to combat this is organization.  Simply sitting down and saying, I’m going to write something, is not a productive endeavor.  It leads to the rushed, forced feeling.  In the end it makes the writing feel almost like a chore.  I’ve always looked at various ways to become more organized, but generally never implemented much in the way of a system.  I never gave it enough time for that system to take hold and become so routine that it was just another of the many processes I go through on any given day.  Now, with a lot of time available to me, it seems to be the perfect opportunity to begin finding a system of organization, research, and writing that helps everything come together; something to make the process flow and seem more natural rather than a chore.  This search for a system is also a wonderful writing opportunity.

As I research and test out different ways in which to better organize my writing life (and perhaps other aspects of my life as well) I’ll share them here.  There are many methodologies, and each person has to find the one that works best for them, but perhaps for other people looking to get a better grasp on things some of what I chronicle might be a spring board to discovering your own method for gaining control of the spiraling chaos that life can sometimes become.

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