What I have been trying recently....

As has probably become very apparent if you had visited my blog, I am a bit of a geek.

Nothing gives more satisfaction then to find a new extension for FireFox or a new way to waste some time on the Internet.

I have been aided in the past by my friends and colleagues (I do work in IT - it does tend to attract the upper strata of geeks) but more recently I have found a website that provides my choicest and most interesting new finds. It is called LifeHacker (LH).

Most recently, I have been steered to try 3 new things which I want to share with you now....

Firstly, I am really bad at organising my time - I find it hard to work out what to do and when to do it (the usually problem of just doing things as they come along (and not prioritising)).
I decided I needed to work smarter and, via LH, I found a site called Remember the Milk (RTM). It is a site for putting together a to-do list and setting priorities, time-frames and most importantly reminding me of when to do them!
It took a while to load my work tasks and personal to-dos into it and make sure I worked out which ones reoccurred and how long they would take me to do. The initial time spent has rewarded itself ten-fold, RTM will send me an email and/or a IM to my gtalk whenever a task is due and aiding new tasks is really simple!
It has made me more productive at work and I can now remember stuff - so its all good.
It has loads of kewl options, like tagging (a-la Gmail), adding locations, emailing tasks to people and a great search engine - it even allows me to postpone tasks!

Secondly, as a follow-on to remembering stuff I wanted a better way (or more fun) to look at my expenditure then just keeping a dull spreadsheet. Again LH came to my rescue with a piece on Buxfer. It allows me to make a note of all my expenses and see what I spend my cash on (always handy).
The reason why I like it is because I can tag all my expenses (as you can see I like the idea of tagging) and again it has a good search engine so I can find my entries. It has also got some obligatory expenditure analysis - very kewl (note: I know I'm sad - but I do work in MI).

Thirdly, I have found a really fun way to spend sometime on the internet and its called Twitter. Basically, this is a social-pseudo-blog. The premise is that you send msgs or Tweets (via IM, Txt or by the website) to all the world or just your friends with the answer to the question 'what are you doing?' - but you don't have to answer the question, instead you can post what you like when you like.
It is really addictive as I can send a quick Tweet (via Gtalk) in seconds and let poeple I know what I'm doing and how I'm feeling - and I have set it up to recieve all my tweets from my friends.
It is also quasi-voyeuristic as you can see all the msgs form people or all over the world (I'm not brave enough to have my tweets open to the public) and there are some very amusing people on like Darth Vader!

I have probably cemented my reputation as a geek but I have really got into using these sites and am having fun or being more productive as I result!

.....wanders of to read a book which is not at all geeky (even if it is a Fantasy book which I have archived here!).......

LiS