A lot of amazing software in a day

Today saw the release of Presto Linux and Opera Turbo beta. I have been extremely impressed with both pieces of software and have switched to Presto Linux at work and have begun using Opera Turbo as my main browser. While whether these pieces of software will replace Windows XP and Firefox/Chrome in the long term they are both very promising in that they both offer significant speed boost in their respective fields.

Presto can boot in less than 30 seconds perfectly with all drivers working on an old machine where I had issues with the Windows audio driver. Opera Turbo offers noticeable speed improvement on nearly all web pages by sacrificing image quality; which does not make a lot of difference for most sites as most images do not need to be of very high quality to server their illustrative purposes. Presto sacrifices a lot of Linux functionality that I do not really miss.

If the direction these two pieces of software take gains traction I do look forward to a lot more streamlined applications that takes stripping away the fat to extremes and offers users a much faster but lossy experience, ala MP3 compression.

Side project time management, alternating verses sequential

For the past few weeks I have been trying a few ways to manage my project productive in the limited hours I had in the early hours of the morning. For a whole week I tried alternating between my Passbook project one day, and focusing on marketing my MatrixSolver program the next. This alternating method was tried first because I felt both tasks required equal urgency and therefore I should give them about equal attention. However, after the first week I decided to try something a little different.

The next week, on the second or third week of February, I tried instead to schedule Monday to Wednesday for Passbook and Thursday and Friday for marketing. The result was not unexpected but the productivity gains were. I managed to complete a whole lot more tasks for each area of focus after the work periods simply because I could pickup from where I left off much quicker than before. The constant switching of areas of focus was causing me to backtrack a lot more than needed.

Therefore the need to reduce the amount of distractions, however productive and constructive towards other goals those distractions are, remains important in maximizing productivity. Although as a side note I have now stopped waking up at 1 or 2 am and have returned to a more regular routine of waking up between 3:30am and 5:30am, depending on whether I plan to workout before work. Putting the focus back on exercise instead of side project accomplishments has made me feel better as a person, although not as accomplished.

Re-focusing my efforts

One of my new years resolutions has been to post on both of my blogs every day. However after analyzing the results of my site traffic I have decided to focus my daily blogging efforts on my 24 Hour Apps blog instead of PCN. The amount of trivial stuff I was posting here was simply not getting any traffic and it was not surprising to me as most of the time I was just aggregating interesting information I found, which serves little value and I was not aggregating at the speed and volume required for a real news blog.

Therefore from now on I will try to post news that truly interest me personally as well as personal thoughts and opinions so that the amount of original content should increase as a percentage of all posts despite a reduction in the posting rate. This will free up more of my time to focus on 24 Hour Apps, which is something I have more interest in everyday as my traffic goals, project development goals, as well as financial goals for that blog is giving me a lot to learn and write about.

ITWire and excessive content paging

ITWire is a pretty good news service. It often covers news with limited popular coverage. However they have been reducing the amount of content they show per page, in what I assume is an attempt to increase page/banner views, to a ridiculous point. While trying to read an article on Sun's Chief Open Source Office's interview I was faced with a page with only 270 words, with the interview split into 6 pages. Clicking 6 times to read a short interview is not what I would consider a good use of time. Hopefully they see the problem they are causing for their users and advertisers and put a stop to this madness and really rescue the usability of an otherwise pretty good site.

Don't waste the first hours of the day

I have been following my new routine of waking up very early in the morning. This is more-or-less the second week I have following that routine and I have no reached the stage where I am now waking up around 1 AM. Originally I intended to move to around 2 AM gradually, however I purchased a Sleeptracker last week and found that by using it to wake up between 1 and 2 AM I can do so without feeling extremely drowsy. A Google search for Sleeptracker will turn up many results if you are interested in finding out about how it works.

Just waking up at 1 AM is not really enough to really improve my quality of life if I am dead tired all through out the day, so I incorporated some polyphasic sleeping pattern ideas into the routine. Polyphasic sleep basically theorizes that you only need REM sleep to survive and that your body will adjust to any lack of REM sleep by inducing it quicker and longer at every opportunity until you get your daily requirements met. Therefore quick naps are enough to fill up on REM sleep, which is what I do around 3:30 AM, 5 AM, and 5:30 PM.

The naps are a huge energy boost in an otherwise unsustainable sleeping routine. Basically the nap times are chosen based on what I intend to do. At 3:30 AM I nap until 4 AM so that I can be fresh for my work out with kettlebells. Then at 5 AM I semi-nap, as I am not really that tired, to ensure that I am as fresh as possible for my day at work. After coming home from work I take my afternoon nap so that I have energy for my family and friends. The day can then end around 9 or 10 PM depending on my commitments.

Overall I am still getting around 5.5 hours of sleep and I have way more stamina throughout the day than when I was sleeping for 8 to 9 hours. This means that the time I am dedicating to my personal projects in the morning for about 2 hours each work day does not impact my regular routine at all. It also feels great to know that just an hour after the day starts I am awake and making the most of it. When you think about it most people waste over the first five hours of their day being asleep.

The side effects of success and fame

Michael Arrington's reflective post on the personal challenges he faces as the head of a highly visible and influential startup blog was quite a sad read. In a most recent event Arrington got spat on by some convention attendee in Germany, and he recalls a period in his life where he felt his own life as well as those of his employees in danger from some threatening psycho. It is a brutally honest account of what happens when one finally makes it into the spotlight as all sorts of people start paying attention to you and what you do.

While I think some people will think what he experienced as a small price to pay for success I can fully sympathise with his feeling of fatigue and burnout at the situation. Hopefully Arrington comes to terms with just how much his work means to him and decides whether the costs are worth it.

President Bush's lessons for everyone

The Washington Post has an interesting article on what Obama can learn from Bush's terms as president. However it seems that we can all learn about what not to do in life by observing Bush. Some of the lessons are:

Presidents set the tone. Don't be passive or tolerate virulent divisions.
For most people this is highly useful advice. Often we will get caught up in our jobs and everything that everybody else wants us to do and forget about focusing on the "tone" of our lives, that is, what we really want to do and where we really want to be. When we are presented with conflict in our lives we must resolve it instead of tolerate it. Only then can we live distraction free to achieve our goals.

A president must do the homework to master the fundamental ideas and concepts behind his policies.
Research, research, research. All throughout university the thought is drilled into students through a ton of research projects that give little room for personal input. The reason for this is often not clear to the student until they graduate. The key lesson is not to give you a channel to rant but to help you understand how to learn first then create an argument or course of action second. If you fail to do the first the results of what you do second will very much be negatively impacted by unexpected outcomes.

Presidents must tell the public the hard truth, even if that means delivering very bad news.
For pretty much everyone dealing with hard truths is very difficult. We basically have entire industries (drugs, alcohol) that allow people to defer or escape the troubles in their life. I call them escapes because they do nothing productive in resolving your problems. The first step of finding a solution is identifying your problem. It is often quite easy to forget.

The article presents many other points with overlapping themes. Nonetheless, I found the article to be a very good introspective read and has helped remind me of the various life lessons that I need to employ on a day to day basis that have been forgotten.