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... :) ).

I hope I don't have any homework that night!

SyFy just announced that new episodes of Stargate Universe begin on March 7!  There will be 10 new episodes coming (Yay!), unfortunately, these will probably be the last 10 episodes (Boo!).

Also, for you Sanctuary fans (and wanna be fans-like me), 10 new episodes are coming for that as well, beginning April 15.

Read all about it here!

Happy Birthday, Jules Verne!

Today (February 8) is Jules Verne's birthday.  He, as much as anyone else in my early life, influenced what became my love for science, science fiction, and all things gadget.  I'm not much of a novel reader, but I remember loving the books of his that I did read.

Anyway, he must be famous.  Even Google has gotten into the act of celebrating his birthday...

Golf quote trivia question

Who said the following?

"It's good sportsmanship not to pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling."

Remember, no cheating and answer posted in a day or two*.

*But if you really need to know now, you can go here.

One of these days, I'm going to see this show

My wife and teenage daughter really like this show.  From the few snippets I've seen, I think I'd like it as well.  (And you can't go wrong with Amanda Tapping, but I digress.)  Anyway, it appears that Sanctuary has been renewed for a fourth season, so good on ya guys!  Keep it going and one of these days I'll have a marathon and catch up on the episodes!

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.

Ahh-choo! Auggh! You're too close to me! Augggh!

This is why I get a flu shot every year, and take my vitamins, and...

A recent story in DiscoveryNews told of a research experiment where scientists gave each of 788 high school students and staff a device* that recorded anytime two devices came within 10 feet of each other.  Why 10 feet?  Apparently, that's "considered the maximum distance that spit, phlegm, or snot infected with influenza can travel." (the story's wording, not mine.  And I'm assuming this is via sneeze or cough and not via being flung by some other method... but I digress...)  This was done over the course of a regular high school day of classes, lunch, and other meetings.  So how many interactions did these devices record?  Care to venture a guess?

Well, I'll tell you: 762,868!  That's almost 1,000 times during a regular school day that each student or teacher had the opportunity to come across possible pathogens.  Yikes!

*For all you techno-geeks out there, apparently this is the device used to record the encounters.

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!