Pete's Eats

“Please take care when opening overhead lockers as items may have shifted during flight…”

It stings every time, still.

In the best tradition of MIT hacks, a group of students transformed a statue of 17th century puritan, John Harvard, into Master Chief complete with Helmet and Gun to celebrate the launch of Halo 3.

Photo’s here

Boston News Story Here

Thought I’d do a quick rundown of the various iPhone specific UI’s I’ve come across so far. I have to say, they’ve been pretty useful so far…

• Media Temple – Server Admin UI
• Movable Type – Blog Admin UI
• Mint – Stats Monitor UI
• WordPress – Admin UI

If you know of any more then leave a comment and we can build a listing to be proud of

Halo 3 is completely amazing. I used to hate playing shooters on a console because I was too used to keyboard and mouse controls. With diminishing options for that type of gameplay, certainly with the newer games, I’ve overcome that disability just for Halo 3… I spent a good few nights playing Bioshock (1am with the lights out made the experience) and I’m now ready

Halo 3 is out tomorrow in the UK. Check out the online manual for the game in the meantime (requires Silverlight) or the ‘live’ videos on MSN.

Following on from my previous post about how busy things have been for me recently, I thought I’d write a little bit about the time management processes and devices that I’ve adopted. There’s probably nothing original here, but most of them have been born out of necessity and not from research in my case. I’m sure this helps with the adoption of new working practises though.

• No Friday Meetings – This is the most recent innovation for me. I’ve found that meetings on Fridays are unlikely to result in dynamic follow through on any resulting actions. The urgency is lost because of the weekend and Monday will bring it’s own pressure to bear too. Friday, for me, has become the best day to focus on admin issues, paperwork and inbox catchup and I’ll generally try to make it a work-from-home day if I’m in the country. Losing the commute to either London or Reading gives me back much needed extra hours and I have a no-guilt policy if I finish early too – any time gained here is more than paid back during the rest of the week without a doubt (you try working between GMT and GMT -8!!!). Fridays have become incredibly valuable now and very much improved by overall ability to cope with the workload.
• Scheduling Time Slots – Throughout the week I make sure to schedule timeslots in my calendar called ‘A-Time’. Our calendars are shared at MS and when trying to book some time with you people will look for the free slots, thus actually putting in these ‘appointments’ helps to keep some time reserved for actual tasks too. During these times I screen my calls and do not answer any new emails (Outlook’s filters are great at separating old unread email from new emails). I make sure that going into each of these a-time sessions, I have my tasks mapped out – they’re designed to make sure that I complete specific things and make a real dent in my to-do list.
• Phone Email – I used to think it was pretty cool to get my email on my mobile phone. I don’t anymore. MS, unsurprisingly, issue Windows Mobile Smartphones for us to use for business and their integration with Exchange Server is seriously impressive. But actually checking, and maybe responding, to email on them can really eat into your time. So I’m super-critical when screening my email on my handset now and only read/respond to things that genuinely require it. Why take 5 mins to answer a mail now when it will take 30 secs on your laptop later? Unless it’s urgent of course…
• Microsoft OneNote – Mac users are completely missing out on this. OneNote is completely brilliant at helping you to organise thoughts, notes and document drafts. It’s ability to use smart copy & paste with different media types and enhance the workflow between other applications is a marvel. I’ve come to really rely on OneNote a lot – which made it all the more painful yesterday when I deleted the wrong thing and lost some info… The clostest thing I’ve seen on the Mac is Voodopad, but it’s really not in the same league.
• Now – I have a general policy that if something can be dealt with immediately then that’s how it gets done. I won’t put anything easy off ’till later because it piles up before you know it, and maybe it’s just me, it clouds my ability to get things done. A head full of reminders is a surefire way to forget things.

There are probably more things I’ve adopted/evolved but haven’t even observed them myself yet. The end result for me, is a realisation that it’s not my workload that I need to manage all the time – it’s my headspace. I’ve had to learn to think about a wider range of issues in a clear and precise way and it’s not easy (for me anyway). The more I manage my day and build process and routine into it, the easier I find things to manage. It’s hard because I’m not a very structured person generally. I definitely like to be a little more freeform with my life but this process of awareness is helping me to compartmentalise my work/life balance.

This chap has an iPhone too, and writes a strangely familiar tale of gadget consumption to my own sorry tale. I like to think that I’m not quite that bad, but I understand that denial is common in these sorts of obsessions so I’ll just be quiet, point at him and slowly shake my head whilst putting on my very best ‘oh dear, oh dear, oh dear’ face (but I’ll call it ‘guilt displacement therapy’ if you don’t mind).

My biggest observation with the iPhone so far, is that I’m still not quite at ease with it but I feel that I should be. I’m constantly looking at the battery indicator expecting it to confirm my fears that it’s about to croak, but it does neither. Or that there is no ‘Edge’ service when I’m away from a wifi hotspot, but there’s always that little boxed ‘E’ right next to the service provider’s name*. And the delicious UI has yet to freeze or crash despite me expecting it to everytime I ‘finger’ an icon or slide a, well, slider, before something has finished loading. No, the iPhone is a marvel and that’s exactly why it won’t catch me unawares you know – I’m ready for it to go wrong (or bang) every time I pick it up.

He’s wrong though, about the applications. I have an increasing number of cool apps on there, from an Apache server to a Flickr uploader that can actually access the camera and there are still 40+ apps currently available to install. Of course, there’s the little matter of breaking the phone out of jail to enable this sort of thing first…

Nevertheless, I shall do my best to enjoy the honeymoon period while I can (I’m a seasoned Apple v1 early adopter – ’nuff said?), although I suspect my recent quiet period (see last entry) has probably cost me any chance I may have had at renewed alpha-geekness in our ever-increasing community of tech, games & web industry folks here in Brighton these days. (note to self: I wonder if large corporations like Microsoft are where geek-elephants go to die? :S)

If you have an iPhone and run MT4, then you should check out the iPhone admin UI. It’s pretty good actually, although it probably won’t last of course

* Well, with Orange and T-Mobile that is. 3 doesn’t work at all.

With 12+ years in our fast-paced industry you’d think I knew a few things about time management. I know I did.

The last six months at Microsoft have completely dismissed that idea however. I can genuinely say that I have never been so busy in my professional life before, ever! It’s not that I’ve been lazy before of course, but my life has tended to run a little bit hot and cold at times. I’m not complaining though, the learning experience has covered a vast amount of ground and has clearly delivered exactly what I was hoping for from going to work for a large multi-national tech company. I’ll be writing an entry about my motives very soon by the way, so I won’t go into the ‘why’s’ here for now.

It’s very, very easy to become really, really busy at Microsoft. It can take but one morning of phone calls and emails to over-commit yourself for the next two months. One of the key skills I’ve had to teach myself is to create processes around my own productivity and whilst working for a large organisation, this isn’t as easy as it might sound. I’ll be doing a blog entry on this soon too…

Blogging will take a place in those processes once again too. I had considered giving up my blog, but I’ve changed my mind. I think (hope) it will help me to dump some clutter from my head if I give it some space on these pages.

Technology, design and business. I have new focus…