Archive for March, 2006

Trying to Get Things Done

Published on 27 March 2006 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments
My desk, after tidying. That’s the neatest it’s been in weeks. I wonder how long I can maintain it like this.

I decided to start using some of my time in the evening to read and perhaps do some writing last night. First I needed to tidy my desk and my study a little bit. I don’t know how, or why, but I have a bad tendency to accumulate vast amounts of paper. No, actually I do know how I accumulate so much paper - I see something interesting online and I print it off. Why? So I can 1) read it in more detail later, and 2) so I have a permanent record of it. This is a complete fallacy, because 90% of the time I don’t read it later, and haphazardly stacked piles of paper are not, in any way, shape or form, permanent records!

I think I should wean myself off this paper dependency and start making a note of things instead - and unless I read something in detail and decide it’s good enough to keep (in which case I can just save a copy electronically!) - that’s all I need to do.

Some of my folders a la Getting Things Done. I need to tidy my filing cabinet next so they can live there…

Last night I chucked out around 50% of the paper that’s been sitting in stacks on my desks. Not only that, but in the spirit of trying to get myself organised a la Getting Things Done, I even got some manila folders and have started filing the papers I want to keep into separate folders. I ought to really get myself properly organised one way or another, though. The book recommends setting aside time to get your working spaces organised. I’d need to do both my study and my office, I think. My office is already halfway there, as I had a blitz a few weeks ago and heaved four years’ worth of paper into a paper recycling bin. I just need to make sure everything is tidied up and filed more elegantly - need to get rid of all those piles!

My study at home is another story. I have boxes of stuff from uni (undergrad and postgrad) that I haven’t looked at in years. Perhaps I need to be brutal and just turf it all out, using the I-haven’t-looked-at-this-in-over-a-year principle. The principle being that I haven’t looked at whatever it is in so long that I have forgotten all about it - so why is so important that I need to keep it? I’ve used this principle once before, many years ago, and it works! I threw a lot of stuff away back then, and it didn’t make any difference to my life that it was all gone.

Obviously if I’m going to keep things in order, I need to be vigilant and regularly chuck things out (not collecting them in the first place would be better, but let’s take this slowly). Last year was The Year of Early Rising, let’s see if this year can be The Year of Getting Things Done.

*This was meant to be an illustrated post - I took a few pictures of the mess! - but Blogger is not cooperating this morning. Edit: Pictures added 5:51am, 29 March.

News flash 7:15am: Check out Open Stacks - for my first ever contribution to a blog carnival! Lots of very interesting posts showcased there, many bloggers reporting on the recent Computers in Libraries conference. I really love the way I can attend all these conferences vicariously through other bloggers. (Will anyone blog Click 06??)

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Summer: Over for another year?

Published on 26 March 2006 in Uncategorized. 4 Comments

I think summer’s over for this year. Not only has the sun been rising later and later and setting earlier and earlier everyday, there are other signs:

  • 5am feels different to how it’s felt for the last three months or so. There’s a slight chill in the air and snuggling under the doona seems like a good idea.
  • The birds are getting up later. I think they must wake up with the sunrise, and, as the sun is rising later, so are they. I miss the sound of cockatoos, doves and the occasional kookaburra when I wake up. (No we don’t live anywhere rural, but we’re lucky enough to still have enough trees around for birds to have places to roost and feed.)
  • Somewhere in the middle of last week, it suddenly cooled down. We went from a humid maximum temperature of 35.2°C (95.39°F) to temperatures in the low-mid 20s (20°C = 68°F), and with the occasional light cool shower.
  • Baubles the Cat looks very fluffy at the moment. She usually looks slightly scraggly (is there such a word? Think ’sweaty cat’*) in mid-summer heat and fluffs up as it cools down.
  • I’ve felt the need for a jumper some mornings. And my usual summer wear around the house, the traditional Malaysian sarong, is starting to feel a bit drafty.

Oh well. I always find it amusing how much we (I) bitch and moan about the weather when there’s absolutely nothing to be done about it.

An aside: Lately I haven’t been playing any games at all. No WoW, no Civ, nothing. Not entirely sure why. This is probably a good thing, in some ways. I might see if I can start to use my evening time for more reading and writing. I need to fit in all the work-related writing I’d like to do, somewhere.

*Hooray, Internet! There is such word: see this definition.

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Slow Sunday

Published on 26 March 2006 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

Have been enjoying a lazy weekend. Besides the usual things like laundry, grocery shopping, napping, and lunch at Ang’s (at our local shopping centre, in the area wonderfully named Dogswamp), I’ve been reading, pondering responses from everyone who’s responded to my survey and slowly replying to the great emails. I’m sorry it’s taking me so long!

The other thing I’ve been doing, is trying to finish cataloguing all our nonfiction books on LibraryThing. Some time ago, I suggested that we had around 2180 books. This weekend, I’ve discovered that we have somewhat more than that - I’m up to 2260 books at this stage, and there are still about three or four bays worth. It’ll be very good to finish and have a record of every book we have in the house! I’ve gotten very good at typing in ISBNs, I must say. Earlier on M borrowed a barcode scanner from work for me to use, but I’ve returned it.

I love LibraryThing. Before this all our books were just one great mess of titles - normally they are all neatly on shelves (not quite as bad as in the picture, which was taken when we were moving house), but it’s always been pretty difficult to know what we have and where they all are. Now that almost all our books are on LibraryThing, we’re also starting to get them in some semblance of order. For the first time in ages, all our fiction is in a rough order (i.e. grouped according to the first letter of the author’s surname) - this makes it so much easier to locate things, and has even given me the incentive to reread old favourites that used to be buried away. We do need more shelves, though…

I’m one of those people who, when I visit someone’s house for the first time, always looks to see if they have any books or bookshelves I can browse. There’s something infinitely interesting about looking through someone else’s book collection, no matter how small it is. Far more interesting than looking in someone’s bathroom cabinet - which has never appealed to me, by the way; I don’t care to know if someone has a 15g tube of elocon (mometasone) ointment 0.1% in their cabinet.

LibraryThing satisfies this book browsing urge very well - you can see other users’ collections, and the system even shows you who has the same books as you do, and then you can go and browse and see if they own anything else you might possibly like to read.

Speaking of reading, I might go and lie in bed and read for a while. Ahh I love Sundays!

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