Why I *need* two iPad 2s!

How a busy rabbit doesn't lose all his carrots...

You may have noticed I haven't done much posting lately.  The problem isn't lack of desire; it's lack of time!  I'm taking two courses at college in the evenings and until recently, was finishing up an independent study class.  Just to show you what it's like, one of my weeks had a final on Friday, read a book and write a report for a class for the following Tuesday, and study for a midterm for the other class on Thursday.  All this while keeping up with class attendance, class reading, and doing assignments!  I'm amazed I didn't drop dead that week!

The only way I was able to keep things straight was to have all my assignment deadlines online and at my fingertips.  I could bore you with all the to-do list type applications that I went through or mention the probably hundreds that I didn't have time for, but I won't do that.  If you'd like to take your own journey through that vast field, just Google "to-do list applications" or "GTD" (Getting Things Done).  It'll definitely keep you busy.

For me, I just had a few requirements:

• online - I had to be able to access it from anywhere.
• easy - nothing complicated.  Just let me enter a task, a due date, and be done!
• quick - See "easy".  Quickly add a task and date.  Keyboard shortcuts are a real help here.
• flexible - But when I need it to do some more complicated things, those features should be available somewhere.  And nothing fancy either: recurring appointments, flagging tasks, stuff like that.

So after a bit of testing, I settled on... are you ready for it?... Todoist.  Like I said, it's nothing fancy, but it lets me do what I need to do to keep organized and on top of my homework quickly and easily and for free!  There's a monthly paid version, as well, with more powerful features which is probably worth it if you need those, but for me the free version is good enough.  

Right now, I'm just using it online, but according to their website they have both iPhone and Android apps available (third-party I'm assuming), and an API to extend Todoist's functionality.  Something I'll have to play with (once I have some time... :) ).

Microsoft Mathematics 4.0 for Windows for free!

Now that I've posted about how I'm not generally going to do this, here's a post I'm copying over from my tech blog 'cuz I think it's of general interest, especially to students...

Here's a freebie I found on Dealnews.  Download Microsoft's Mathematics 4.0 for Windows free!

If you don't know about this program (I didn't!), this is what Microsoft says about it: "Microsoft Mathematics provides a graphing calculator that plots in 2D and 3D, step-by-step equation solving, and useful tools to help students with math and science studies."

Sounds like a handy thing to have especially since I'm taking Stats (well, maybe it could help) and I'm planning to take an upper-division math class later this year.

Old and lazy. Here's a link...

Quite often I post about things techy and geeky.  Some of the posts I think are general interest and will put it here.  Others, however, are quite "geeky" and appeal mainly to a certain group.  I even have a new blogger site just for those types of posts.  A couple of those posts I just copied and pasted from that blog into this one (like this one), but I think from now on I will stick geeky posts in there and maybe post a link to the story.  Or maybe you could just click on the link to my other blog (see sidebar).  Whatever you prefer.

Happy belated birthday to Wikipedia!

Wikipedia turned 10 on January 15, 2011.

I always used to turn to Google when I wanted to find out about something.  Now, I usually end up on Wikipedia first, collect some relevant information (at least according to the Wikipedia article's author(s)) then turn to Google to do more detailed search and research.

Happy Birthday and here's hoping for many more!

EMail recall

As mentioned in this post, hitting "Reply All" in an email could be an embarrassing thing.  If you happen to use GMail, you might have an out--the timing of which is even up to you!  Check out this post from a friend of mine who owns an IT consultancy.  As an aside, he's a good guy who knows his stuff.  Check out his company if you are in the market for IT services!

Do you have an iPad?...

Have I got a case for you!

Okay, maybe I'm just old and nostalgic, but it's really cool!