Welcome, Preston!
Born today (Sat Nov 10th, 04:31 EST) and weighing in at 8 pounds, 14 ounces - he was 7 days late, but right on time as far as we were concerned.
Still Waiting…
Yup, I’m still pregnant, to the surprise of a lot of people. The official due date is tomorrow, so all I can do is wait. Ken and I do have an ‘eviction date’ for baby on November 9, 2007.
Google Reader Stats, Redux
It’s time for an update on Google Reader. Since my last post on July 27th, I’ve added a number of new feeds, but overall the numbers of articles hasn’t really increased. I’ve also noted that I haven’t starred or shared any more items, even though the numbers of feeds and articles have increased. Based on that, I should be able to drop some feeds from the list, but still get the important posts - we’ll see what the next 60 days brings.
Day 1 of Inbox Zero
I finally got around to watching Merlin Mann of 43folders.com’s talk at Google about Inbox Zero late last night. I figured as it was the 1st of the month, a perfect time to start something like this - so I’ve done just that.
I basically declared Inbox bankruptcy, and renamed my current Inbox, and started with 0 messages. Throughout the day, I checked email less, but when I did, I processed every one until the my Inbox was back to Zero. Dick Kuslika over @ DailyDoseofExcel has written some VBA macros to help with this, known as OutlookTags (look for the link at the bottom of his post), which let you ‘Tag’ messages, which in this case means move them to a subfolder - in my case, Delegated, Replied, Defer or Done.
I certainly felt more productive, but then again, not looking at an Inbox with 1500 emails will lighten anyone’s spirits 
I’m going to continue this experiment for 2 weeks, and see how well I hold up.
3d Ultrasound Video
We did our 3d/4d Ultrasound today - it’s pretty cool. You can checkout a 30 second clip Mac (QT) or PC (DivX)
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A month with Google Reader
I’ve been using Google Reader for a little over a month now, and it’s made a significant impact on my daily life that it warrants a post.
I figure I used to spend 60-120 minutes a day on several tech sites, blogs and other news feeds. I’ve recovered much of that time, thanks to RSS aggregration, and the handy keyboard shortcuts. Why Google Reader vs. other RSS feeds? Interface, Web-based, and sharing.
The interface is simple - keyboard shortcuts, and the ability to ‘Star’ something means I can go back later and dig into it further. It’s also consistant across Windows XP and OSX, Firefox, IE and Safari. I use 2-3 different machines each day, depending on where I am (the iPhone “mobile” version isn’t a nice as the full browser, but it gets the job done). Web based means it’s always up to date, no matter what machine I login from - work/home/iPhone - I never have to think about syncing devices to stay on top of the feeds. With Google Gears, I can even take it offline if I’ve got a large number of items to read.
However, the coolest feature has to be the Sharing. By tagging articles I find interesting, I’m now linking them both on my blog, and my Facebook page. This means I never need to maintain a ‘links’ page anymore, as it’s got a rapidly growing list of bookmarks for things I find interesting.
Google Reader Shared Link
FYI… I’ve added the Google Reader Widget to the sidebar, which contains the last 10 items I’ve shared from my Google Reader feed.
Ultrasound of Baby #2
Software Development Methodologies for the Real World
Scott Berkum has a great post here where he identifies a number of different development managements methods. Spend a few minutes checking out the comments too, since commenters have suggested additional methods, which are as good as the ones Scott identified.
Google Reader
Ran across Google Reader, a pretty slick online RSS aggregator. Basically an Inbox for news and other feeds. I setup my normal collection of website feeds in about 2 minutes, and promptly got reading. Not sure if I’m going to stick with it, but so far it seems to work really well as a one-stop-shop for RSS feeds. I might even get some of my day back, though I’ll miss clicking refresh on a 1/2 dozen sites every hour…
Flickr Photos
