self organization

while i wait for a phone call today - i'd like to put you up on something that i find very cool.

pocketmod which is a very handy website for those of us who are becoming more and more obsessed with maximizing our time.

after my life change - i've become slowly more and more obsessed with saving more time. wondering things like - if i can do this on my pda while i'm on the way to such and so place - will that help? should i make notes to follow while standing in line at the grocery store?

for me it has much less to do with being productive - i hate that term - it's almost as if while i'm in my personal life i have to think about things like workflow, i mean it's my personal life.

so, if it's not about 'being productive' (as if this were still the industrial revolution you know?) then what is it?

it's about maximizing my personal time so that i can have things done and still have time to kick back, spend time with my wife and make sure that we're not spending all of our time doing the 'essentials' required for living life.

because one of those essentials is 'getting things done so you can relax.'

make your own blank book

there are lots of ways to do this.

my fiancee and i happened to be in an arts store recently and i was killing time looking at the bookbinding books because, well they were there and i have a natural curiosity. plus, i felt like my fiancee would get what she needed done faster if i was just out of the way so i amused myself as i am want to do.

i ended up finding a quick and dirty way to create a pocket notebook by taking a piece of 8.5x11 sheet of paper and folding it a few times twice over and then slicing a bit in the middle and folding it accordian style until you end up with an eight page notepad. after seeing that this rather simply bound instruction book on beginning bookbinding was on the order of $30, i promptly placed it back on the shelf and went to find my amorcita.

later, bored in a situation i should have been paying attention, i managed to work up a mock up simply from memory of the figure.

at home with my next prototype, i grabbed a glossy ad for rogers (local cable conglomerate) and worked up a 22 page version. i was so excited i took a magazine, ripped the front cover off and promptly created a 42 page version.

i leafed through the magazine until i found an add that i liked and promptly made a 78 page version. so now i have three very personal, rough around the edges notepads.

i can't wait until i can get my hands on some paper other than my printer type. perhaps some of that resume paper.

so, in that spirit i present a few posts on book assembly. perhaps you'll get the bug too.

toby craig book assembly photolog
brian sawyer book assembly flickr log

make your own manga

it's probably just a matter of time before someone latches on to this and makes a free version for *nix or something but i have to admit that i was tempted to download the demo and take it for a whirl.

then i remembered i'm getting married soon and don't have time for that kind of thing, or much of anything.

so much to do, so much to do. :D so excited, am i

manga studio

british teen saves family farm via biodiesel

well, not really but it caught your attention


from autobloggreen (by way of digg.com) comes this fantastic story out of britain about a home schooled student who up and decides to make biodiesel and ends up saving the family quite a pound in the long run.

the story is a bit of a fluff piece, nothing much on the particulars other than the kind that get it dugg and or re-blogged around the planet.

much like i'm doing this morning.

make yer own biodiesel