Charles and Christy’s Weblog

Ok, let’s start over. First, I’ll draw the ideal process from a GTD point-of-view.

Next, I’ll add the two desired media in which I’d like to work to enable this process. Eventually, maybe I’ll replace the Paper Planner with a PDA.

This is already looking complicated. Let’s see why I need these two media. Without a PDA, I need something to have with me at all times. Plus, I like to be able to jot down ideas as I come across them in meetings, transit, etc. Thus the Paper Planner.

Online storage is so that I can seamlessly work with the PIM information in applications across several computers. I need to be able to sort, print, share, and backup. To me means that I have them centrally located, networked system for consistent backup.

That’s it for now. Next, I’ll try some technology options to enable the edges.

I’ve recently been inspired by successfully settung up a webdav server and playing around with Mozilla Calendar. It’s an incredibly useful thing to be able to centrally store my schedule while segmenting it into publishable units based on context. For example, I plan to set up a family birthdays calendar file to share while keeping my personal appointments (read: class schedule) seperate.

iCalendar also brings the possibility to centrally categorize and store my TODOs.

Having read David Allen’s book Getting Things Done (GTD), I’ve been trying to get organized and be more on top of things.

A critical component to that is setting up contextual TODO lists, having them at your fingertips at all times, and refreshing them once a week from a master project list.

As usual, PIM tools tend to get in the way more than they help. I’m incredibly frustrated by the myriad of needs and the imcomplete approaches provided by any existing tools.

I’ve fumbled with Evolution and certainly have been strapped to Outlook, neither of which are platform-independent enough for my needs. On top of that, Outlook isn’t very compatible with LDAP or iCalendar.

My PDA is really tired and I can’t afford a replacement. It doesn’t play that well with standards and doesn’t bounce between FreeBSD and Windows very well.

I stumbled across PlannerMode for Emacs, which looks promising if I can get it to be GTD-friendly and synced up with my iCalendar files. Looks like there’s been some discussion, but doesn’t seem quite on the right track yet.

Tonight I tried a mind mapping exercise to see if I could gain any insights into the PIM mess. By looking at the resulting network, obviously not.

Have I mentioned how much I like GraphViz? Pure genius.

Success! I finally got qmail working.

Need to wait a bit after DNS propogates to see if my ISP will let me send out mail from cburdick.net. But at least I can relay for my other accounts.

Oh - don’t even try to spam me at cburdick.net. I haven’t hooked up completely to the outside and the firewall will send you packing.

Definitely wasn’t simple or painless, but if you follow the directions fairly strictly and don’t let your OS get in the way too much, it works fine. Behavior of the config files could certainly be documented more clearly.