Like most of you, I’m busy. I not only have the normal crapload of work stuff to juggle, but also a few books at various stages of completion, my outreach/activism stuff, and an everyday life to live with its own demands. I also get a lot of email, spread across a variety of accounts. Like just about every other geek on the planet, I read and was fascinated by David Allen’s GTD methodologies. I put them into practice, and they mostly worked for me, though on occasion, I’d fall out of the system, get really behind on things, and then pick myself back up and try again. Finally, I’ve hit on a wonderful set of tools that has kept me on track, and I’d like to share. Maybe you’ll find something of use in this…maybe not.

You can’t always get what you want…or can you?

Being a geeky tinkerer, I’ve shaved the yak¹ more than I care to admit when it comes to tweaking my task-tracking and email systems. I’ve tried every manner of To-Do app for the Mac and Linux, including plain text files edited with Vim, some weird ruby scripts, some shell scripts, Things, OmniFocus, iGTD, TaskPaper, and more. None of the systems ultimately stuck for me; the biggest problem for most of them was that they were not ubiquitously available, so I failed to use them, and they became systems that I could not put my trust in. Some of the apps don’t sync with other computers, or they do it poorly, which is the kiss of death for me. I work on at least two and sometimes three computers, and I also have ideas about next actions on-the-go that I need to record (did I also mention that I don’t always have paper?). If I couldn’t easily put next actions into my key lists, I held them in my head, which isn’t a very mind-like-water thing to do, and which also defeats the purpose of having lists as Allen recommends. I walked around stressed that I was missing something, with a set of next actions on my computer, and a set on magazine response cards, random scraps, and other papers that failed to work into a coherent system. What I need is a system that is available just about anywhere, that I can add things to quickly and effortlessly, and which is integrated into my workflows. With my iPhone as a portable device, this shouldn’t be too tall of an order.

A significant number of next actions in my life come from email, so a system integrated with my email is key. If my next actions have to be accessible from anywhere, my email should be too. Ideally, I’d like to sit down at any computer and have basically the same email setup, with all of my accounts in a single place. If I flag an email in any of my accounts in my email client as part of a next action, I should also have a way of quickly integrating that email into my trusted system. To round things out, I also want to have access to my calendar everywhere, including on my mobile.

So, to review, this is what I needed:

• Easy access with low barriers to adding items to next action lists
• Ubiquitous presence, with easy access on any computer with a network connection, and accessible on my mobile device
• Easy email integration
• All email accounts in one place
• Easy calendar access

This shouldn’t be a too hard in principle, but for me, it was tough in practice, and for a long time. I hated every email client I used, and jumped around a lot (Mutt, Mail.app, Thunderbird, Entourage: you name it, I tried it and hated it for one reason or another). Frustrated by a lack of integration, I wandered around and played with a bunch of things, without success or joy. (If you correspond with me, I probably even failed to respond to an email of yours during some of these experiments. Sorry. I suck.)

Finally, in one of these storms of experimentation, I stumbled upon my own email and task-management holy grail….

My Holy Grail

Pulling together a few cheap or free services, I was able to create a system that fulfilled all of my requirements and then some. My system relies on a few tools: GMail, Google Calendar, Remember the Milk, and Jott. Throw in GrandCentral for convenient voicemail and control over the phone (which, as some of you may recall, I dislike), and everything falls into place beautifully.

Here’s how I have things setup.

Gmail and Google Calendars

I signed up for Google Apps , and used my own domain name with Gmail. This also gave me access to Google Calendars, a custom start page, and a bunch of other goodies. Gmail is seriously powerful, and is, by far, my favorite email client today (I expected to hate it, but quickly grew to love it). Gmail does just about everything I need: it has tons of space, great filtering, it can handle multiple email addresses and accounts intelligently, and it is available anywhere with a web browser and network connection (and on my iPhone, too). Turn on the keyboard shortcuts, and you can seriously rock out inbox zero in a hurry — seriously, until you try it, you have no idea how much the mouse slows you down. Install a few Firefox plugins (like Better Gmail 2, FireGPG, and this greasemonkey script for HTML sigs) and you have an email client that is on-par feature-wise with most desktop systems, yet superior in many ways. (Here’s a great article on pointing all of your mail at Gmail and making it work well.)

Google calendar, part of Google Apps, syncs nicely with the Mac with the recent BusySync Beta. Anything added to a BusySync’d iCal gets added to Google Calendar, and vice-versa. This works beautifully with the iPhone, too, the device on which I am often adding appointments.

Remember the Milk

I have tried just about every online to-do system, and disliked just about all of them. Most notably, I spent some time with Nozbe and Vitalist, only to leave them. Nozbe? Too green or something. Didn’t stick. Vitalist? Not bad, but I stopped using it for some reason; it didn’t seem natural to me. I was hesitant to try another to-do system, but heard good things about Remember the Milk, so I gave it a shot. This feels like home! RTM has a simple (but not simplistic) interface, a great Quicksilver plugin for entry on the fly on my Macs, an ace iPhone setup, and best yet, a plugin that integrates RTM with Gmail. This cool little plugin for Firefox lets you see and add tasks right in Gmail, and can optionally make starred emails into tasks. You can even hide the task pane when you want to. Finally, you can also integrate RTM and Google Calendar, for omnipresent task love.

Jott

While RTM has a nice iPhone web interface, sometimes, you just can’t find an open wifi connection, or you’re in a hurry, or you’re driving and need to get a task down. To fill this potential hole, I use Jott. Jott works like this: you call Jott’s 1-800 number, dictate your message, and it gets automatically transcribed into your Jott account. From there, you can do all kinds of cool stuff with it, including sending Jotts to other people, sending yourself reminders, and more. One of the best parts of Jott for this whole setup is that you can link Jott with RTM and Google Calendar very easily. If you activate these links in your account, you can call Jott, dictate to-do items, and have them automatically added to your RTM list. You can also add Google Calendar appointments by Jotting. This makes adding to-dos and calendar items extraordinarily simple, and available anywhere you have a cell signal. Thus, the hurdle to getting those next actions in your trusted system is very low indeed, and available anywhere, anytime you have a phone (and I always have my iPhone with me, nerd that I am).

Grand Central

This isn’t as big a piece of the pie for me, but I like GrandCentral, another free service that simplifies the phone and voicemail. When you sign up, you get a number in the area code of your choice. You can then set it up so that when someone calls your GrandCentral number, it rings the other phones you want to be contacted at. For example, for my friends, I have my GC number ring my cell, my home, and my work all at the same time. If I don’t pick up on any of those, GC takes a voicemail for me, and then sends me an email & SMS message to let me know. You can even customize the message greeting by group or caller, and best yet, you can screen calls and listen in to messages as they’re being left, which gives you control over the phone again.

Conclusion

It took a while, but I think I’ve found the perfect setup. Gmail and iPhone for mail; GoogleCalendar and BusySync to sync iCal and my iPhone calendar; Remember the Milk for task managament anywhere; Jott as a tool for getting actions into the trusted system; and Grand Central, for managing my phone and voicemail. Altogether, this system really works for me, and unless it somehow fails massively and collapses in on itself, I think it is here to stay…this time, for real real, not for play play.

1. pardon the nonvegan term [↩]

I’m going to step out on a limb, against the intelligentsia, against the cinephiles, against just about everyone I’ve talked to, and speak the unspeakable: There Will be Blood was dull. That’s right. I said it. Dull. Hell, let’s go even further: TWBB is turd of a film. Though there’s some excellent acting here, the whole affair is basically a self-indulgent romp of excess. Beyond the excellent acting, I’m wondering what this film does besides drive home the obvious. To know that the early oil business in the US was driven by sociopathic capitalists is no great revelation, and this character study of one of these sociopaths was not all that compelling. So fixated on the totalizing anger and drive for accumulation of a few figures, the film ultimately does little more than amplify such a portrait to unreal terms, and in doing that, it is unflinchingly inhuman. I guess that’s the point, but I don’t find that interesting, or redeeming, or even vicariously fun.

I was actually surprised about how little I enjoyed this film. Granted, I am no huge fan of any of Paul Thomas Anderson’s other work. I hated Magnolia, and I think Boogie Nights is only barely watchable. I can’t help but wonder if there’s some kind of collective idiocy going about along with this season’s flu virus. Apart from some kind of virus that clouds the judgment of people, I don’t get why everyone is so excited about this film. Do people love this film because they’re told to? Do they love it because they think if they do it makes them look more knowledgeable about film?

Who knows? Maybe I’m the idiot. And that’s fine, as long as my punishment is not having to watch There Will Be Blood again.

Somehow, I ended up on some other Torres family mailing list. I now get emails addressed to “Santiago, Jorge, Ray, JESSE, Lillian, Eddy, Dora, Ben, MARY, Rachel, Ernesto, Aurora, Rafael, mera, Bobby, Eliseo, Joe, Rolando, Rolando, Leo/Liz, Raul, Nacho, Vince.” I got the schedule for the MR AMIGO association event (whatever that is) and some other thing about a Sombrero Festival. I’ve also received emails imploring me to vote for certain local candidates in elections in Texas, addressed to the same list. These people seem to be having a lot of fun somewhere in Texas, what, with the MR AMIGO association, the sombrero festival, and elections. On top of it all, they’re in warm Texas, not in the frozen Tundra of Northern New York.

So, while I have a bunch of relatives with what most people would think of as stereotypical Latin names (Pepe and Poncho and at least a few Marias, to name just a few), I suspect this is intended for a rather different Bob Torres (maybe it it is this Bob Torres, who probably feels annoyed that when people google him, they mostly find crap about some weirdo who writes about animal rights).

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In advance of our work on the 2nd edition of Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World, Jenna and I decided to resurrect our old blog, veganfreaks.org. After about a year of neglect, we decided that we should get back into the swing of posting over there.

You’ll notice that we’ve disabled comments; we found that every time we posted something, we spent more time responding to comments and dealing with some of the stupidity therein that we decided to just shut them off altogether. I know this is a controversial position for any blogger to take, however, I think the nature of the blogosphere is such that if someone wants to comment on our stuff, they can link it and discuss it on their own site. We’ve also decided to shut off comments over at our podcast site as well; we have many other ways (voicemail; email; forums) for people to get in touch.

Anyway, comments are still open here, so if you have anything to say, shout back.

iphone: Emmy…: Our dog, ever hopeful for a piece of maple-cashew-butter toast.

• Truth or Terrorism? The Real Story Behind Five Years of High Alerts : Rolling Stone

Every morning, I wake up to our local NPR affiliate, North Country Public Radio. I’m generally not a huge fan of NCPR’s local coverage, mostly because I find it mind-numbingly dull. Having grown up in Philadelphia, no news seems complete to me without a discussion of the previous night’s murders; however, NCPR does a fine job pushing through the rest of NPR’s content from the satellite feed, and frankly, for a wake-up option, NCPR beats the local alternatives, which tend to be a craptacular bonanza of Top-40 cheese, Country twang, religious ranting, or French talk radio.

In my often half-awake moments listening to NCPR in bed in the morning, I hear one of the local morning hosts, Todd Moe, often mention that listeners can “podcast” their local news stories from NCPR’s website. I also heard the same thing today on the Ed Schultz show, where an announcer described how listeners could “podcast” their content. What each of these conventional broadcasters mean is the following: that one can go to the appropriate website, find the RSS feed for the podcast, and add it to a feed reader or podcatcher like iTunes. To me, this is not what the verb “to podcast” means; instead, what Moe and Schultz’s announcer mean to describe is the process of subscribing to a podcast. Thus, Todd Moe and Ed Schultz and the rest would be perfectly correct to say that one could visit their sites and subscribe to their podcasts; however, to say that one can “podcast the news items” implies — given the contemporary use of “podcast” by most people who know what they’re talking about — that the listener is actually doing the recording and distribution of the news items. Considering these points, when I record my podcast, I am podcasting; when I download Satisfy the Mind or The Angry Hippie or any of the other dozen or so shows I like, I am definitively not podcasting, I am subscribed to podcasts whose content I am receiving.

While this isn’t a huge issue, the repeated misuse of “podcast” does have a nails-on-chalkboard quality about it, almost like when you catch older folks trying to sound modern by using slang that was au currant in like 1989. Todd Moe might as well be saying “Wow, those are some fresh kicks!” to which you could answer “Thanks DJ Jazzy Jeff, now where’s the Fresh Prince?” Much like older folks trying to understand a generation they are almost chronically incapable of comprehending, the misuse of “podcast” points to a broadcast establishment that’s almost chronically incapable of understanding anything outside of their own distribution model.

Chief finding in the study: people aren’t reading like they used to. The biggest declines come with the younger readers, with Americans aged 15-24 spending just 7 minutes daily reading, on average. Related to this decline are piss-poor results for reading scores. According to the report, “reading scores for 12th-grade readers fell significantly from 1992 to 2005, with the sharpest declines among lower-level readers.” (I have often thought that my students are generally not as capable readers as I remember having been, and as I remember many of my peers having been in college.)

The worrying thing about this for me has nothing to do with the bottom-line of being an author, though of course, one always hopes for an audience for what one writes. No, what worries me more than anything is that books can be transformative, not only for individuals, but for societies. If I were not an avid reader, I’d not be vegan, I’d never have thought about the structure of power and control in our world, I’d never have considered many of the alternatives for living my life as I do. I might have come to these ideas in other ways, but books have always opened up new lines of possibility and thought for me, they’ve entertained me, and been some of the best company I’ve ever had. In short, books have made me not only who I am today, they’ve made me a better and smarter me.

How many people are foregoing improving themselves and their societies because they’re foregoing reading?

Addendum, 28 January: I forgot to provide a link to the original report.

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