Stefan Chirila's Blog

I have played a little with Nvu and I must say that even if I like the way you can edit the pages in WYSIWYG mode, I don't like that you cannot see the source in the same time. I like to see that in an editor. I also didn't find it very intuitive. There should be a way to see all the html pages in a directory through a file system browser. You shouldn't be constrained to make a project in order to have the pages at hand. Another issue that concerns me is how much updated it gets. It doesn't seem to be maintained. The last version (1.0) is from June last year. It loses so many points for this issue that it really doesn't even worth to talk about it anymore. Amaya on the other hand lets you see the source while you modify the pages in WYSIWYG mode. This tool is highly maintained; it reached version 9.5 this April. It started in 1996 as a HTML + CSS style sheets editor. But become much powerful over the years. And the main thing is that it's powered by W3C, the web...

Looking for a html editor tool for doing some static html work I stumbled upon PSPad, an old friend of mine, that I used almost two years ago. I liked the Code Explorer that was very flexible and could give you a list of the functions from the file you're editing, be it JavaScript, C or Java. Nice tool and I am glad that these people didn't drop the project and kept improving it. Also in my search for open source WYSIWYG html tools I found two such tools, that I might give a try: * NVU * Amaya Both look interesting, but at first glimpse a little bit unusable. I'll try to review them the days to come.

Didn't blog for a while. I won't blame time, too much work or something in particular. To be honest, I didn't miss me on the blog, even though I was almost the only reader (there was a comment from someone long time ago regarding the GTD Hipster PDA). I did a lot of analyzing and from my blog reading experience I figured that a post from a blog shouldn't be bigger than 20 or 30 lines of text. Such a post should be concise and transmit something. If you have more than one idea that you want to discuss, use another post. Maybe there should be Mini blogs, short and full of knowledge.

Time is precious. Especially these days when change seems to be occurring everywhere. That's why there are so many time scheduling techniques around now more than ever. Wasting time becomes a luxury and using it well becomes a skill. There is a concept of "interstitial time". This is the time between scheduled tasks, like writing a blog, weeding the garden, sleeping or being in a conference. Interstitial time is bonus time, because most of us don't ever think of using it, so this is a good resource. Use it well and it's a very valuable resource. When you are waiting at the dentist, when you wait for tea to be ready in the morning, when you drink your tee (coffee), when you are going with the bus, you have interstitial time, time that can be used for greater good. And one way of using it is to read something useful in these small periods of time. I always carry around reading material that helps me improve my skills in some area that I think it needs improvement. T...

Knowledge thirst. There's always a need to learn more, to know more, to do more, and now. Being so absorbed in the process of trying to find out more, people might shift from their main goal, which is getting things done. One such big absorber is the internet. So much information, so much diversity, so much availability. Reading about the bird flu is two clicks away from finding out that some celebrity starred in the latest most expensive movie ever made. There's something strange about using a browser with tabs capability (Firefox, opera, etc.). When you read some resource that provides links, there's a tendency of opening them in background tabs for further reading, and than in the next tab you find out more information and more links that are open also in background and the process continues. Sometime when you think you have enough tabs open to keep you busy for a long time, you stop opening new tabs, and set a goal of closing every and each one of them (after reading th...

For GTD to work, you must find a way to implement your own organizing system that you can trust. You must trust your system for it to work. If you think that your system might not be good enough for capturing all the stuff that gets your attention, it won’t be successful. You must free your mind from the task of remembering everything that you need to do, and focus on actually doing those things. So I have built myself my own PDA, Hipster PDA that is. Even if it sounds like something highly technologic and expensive, it isn’t. It’s just a bunch of index cards and a binder clip to hold them together. Maintaining lists on these index cards it’s all you have to do. You can have an index card for each context. For example I have the following cards: @ Work – list of next action items that revolve around the “work” context @Home – self explanatory @Calls and Emails – list with calls I have to make and emails I have to write @Agenda – actions that depend on other people (meetings, @Some...

This must be the millionth blog touching the subject of GTD so here goes my attempt. GTD is the short from “Getting Things Done”, a time management method and the title of a book by David Allen. It’s a very good book, that I would advise everyone to read it. The reason I don’t (advise everyone to read it) is because everyone who reads it shouldn’t feel constrained in reading it. People become defensive when someone tries to impose some point of view. The book was subtly recommended by my brother and I postponed reading it because of my defensive system. After I’ve found more people that praise this book I gave it a try, and I’m glad I did. A very good definition for what GTD can be found on Wikipedia . Why is it better than other time management methods? It’s simple; it revolves around maintaining lists and more important: getting stuff out of your head into a system that you can trust and reviewing it periodically. The system can be a PDA, a notebook, a software tool, anything you ca...

Yesterday evening my wife and I finished putting together the 1000 piece puzzle. It is a wonderful feeling to finish something you started. A puzzle, a book, a task. You feel you did something till the end, and that gives you background in order to do it again and again. Getting something done it's a learning habit. After finishing the puzzle I continued reading "Mythical Man Month" and I came across a sentence that I particularly liked: " Thinkers are rare; doers are rarer; and thinker-doers are rarest. " It was about the separation between the "producer" ( the one in charge of assembling the team, dividing work, making the schedule) and the "technical director" ( the one in charge of making the design to be built, and inventing solutions for technical issues). On small teams the thinker (technical director) and the doer (producer) can be one person, but for big teams the pressure it’s too much for it to work. This book is written with m...

So, this is kind of my first blog post. It's a start, and I hope a good one, knowing today is Friday 13. Now let's get back to work, it's almost weekend and maybe I will finish what I started in the morning.