Steve's Seaside Life

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The pyramid principle

PyramidI used to be one of those “everything on my laptop” sort of guys until I started working from home.  Now I use the device pyramid principle, which is another way of saying that I exploit the strengths of 3 devices to offset the weaknesses of those same three devices.  I works like this:

 

600C_127dialpad_medMy least powerful, but most accessible device is my Treo.  I can access anything on it with a couple of clicks, and its up and running in a second (actually its always on but it takes a second to activate the screen).  Because it’s my phone I never leave home without it.  The information I carry on it is the basic stuff:

 

  • Contacts
  • Diary
  • Email
  • Todo
  • eWallet

But because it’s always with me it’s important that I also have stuff for entertainment, (music, books) and work to fill in any otherwise dead time (RSS feeds, tech conferences, email).

Tc1000Next comes my Tablet,  it’s much bigger, takes a couple of minutes to get going, and even longer to find what I am looking for.  However being more powerful it has everything that the Treo has plus:

  • All my scanned documents
  • All my current work
  • Everything …

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Housework

HouseworkSince I started working from home I have increased the amount of house work that I do, my share is:

  • Washing the clothes and putting them away
  • At least one set of washing up
  • Tidying the kids rooms
  • Bed time stories

I don’t mind doing it to much,  but I have recently found that I actually quite enjoy it because I listen to technical conferences or pod-casts on my Treo to keep me occupied (except when reading the bedtime stories :-)).  Today I was listening to the 2nd Tablet PC Podcast that JK has just started, more details on his blog.  and I found that I was actually looking around for more cleaning to do so that I could listen to the end.  Debbie (wife) was pretty pleased when she got home!

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New workstation design!

DeskI have gradually refined my workstation design, and its changed quite a lot since the last time I posted.  So I thought I would provide an update.  This first image shows an overview of the whole environment, there are some key points to look out for:

  • First I two PC’s shown at the bottom, the one on the left is my desktop, running Windows 2003 Server, with 2GB of memory and VM Ware Workstation and all of my other applications.  This PC drives the three monitors via two ATI graphics boards.

Behind the PC’s in a curtain that my wife made for me that hides one hell of tangle of cables!

On top of the centre monitor is a USB web cam.  On the CRT monitor is my headphone jack and volume control and my Secure ID token (dual factor authentication) for my company VPN connection.

The two monitors centre and left are 19” TFT’s that run at 1280*1024.  The one on the right is a 19” Flat CRT.   I tend to use the one of the left for email, reference materials, instant message discussions etc.  The one in the middle for writing, presentations and reading, and the one …

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Personal Information Lifecycle Managemenet

Information LifecycleMy company is currently re-launching its knowledge management environment, so I thought it would be useful to re-think my requirements from a personal and then (in another blog post) from a team/project perspective. The diagram on the left represents a simplified view of the personal information management lifecycle and I will step through each phase looking at the commodity tools that I think all knowledge workers should have, by right, in todays world.  Then I will discuss some of the more advanced tools that may only be applicable to certain high value processes or industry segments.  First off I make no apologies for the simple model I have chosen to use.  More complete lifecycles have been modelled, for example this one by David Pollard which is a more comprehensive view of the creative process, and if you want to dig deeper go read his work as it’s better than mine!  However I wanted something that was visually simple and easy for people to relate to.

I will be testing my companies project against the content of this document,  it should be interesting!

First off lets deal with the coloured groups,  the green hexagons (subscribe, search and discuss) are ongoing activities …

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Health Update

ArthritisAs readers of my blog know I suffer from Adult Onset Stills, a rare disease that affects 1 in about 200,000 people.  Since my last major flare about 13 months ago a combination of Steroids and Immune System Suppresents have managed to get the primary inflammation under control leaving me with chronic pain and fatigue which varies from day to day.  I cope pretty well with this by working from home etc, and its all well documented in this blog.

Right now I just slowly turning the corner after a couple of bad months, but the recovery is very slow and is going in fits and starts. 

Last few monthsThe graph shows the daily symptom levels for the last 6 months.  However progress has been made as follows:

  • I have reduced my Prednisolone levels to 5mg, which is a safe level
  • I have increased my Methotrexate level to 15 mg and the 2 weekly blood tests are showing that I am tolerating it well, ie its not having a toxic affect.  It has however given me migraine headaches every week that last about 48 hours.
  • Luckily my GP also gave me Amitriptyline 35mg for the pain, which also has a common side …

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Treo 600 – what do I think of it so far?

Treo%20600

I usually end up disappointed when I buy a new gadget and must admit I was a little disappointed with the keyboard.  However in all other areas I have been very pleased.  A combination of the built in software and the fine tuning done by third parties makes it a superb phone, and the integration of “phone and media player” and “phone and address book” and “address book and calendar” are excellent.  The one handed navigation is also top notch with a combination of the application buttons, touch screen and that 5 way nav-pad allowing stylus free navigation for most functions.  Battery life seems excellent as well. 

There is so much great software its difficult to know where to start,  but the neatest (and simplest) I have found so far is Call Director.  If you are unfortunate – like me – to live in a poor mobile reception area this is a perfect utility.  As soon as you pop the Treo in its cradle at home,  it diverts your calls to your home number, in my case between the hours of 8:00 and 22:00, take it out the cradle and call divert is cancelled.  If you plug it into the charger …

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Ok, yes I did buy a Treo!

600C_127dialpad_medOnly a few weeks ago I sold my old Pocket PC,  a fairly new Ipaq 4150 and an old Creative Zen MP3 Player.  I got about £450 for the whole lot and included quite a few bits of software and other bits like headphones and stuff I had acquired as free gifts along the way.  I wanted to de-clutter my life and was looking to free up enough money to upgrade my TC1000 Tablet to a TC1100.  Well browsing through eBay I saw a Treo 600 which I though was a great bargain,  for less than £200 I got the Treo, headphones that also work as a headset, and all sorts of other bits and pieces including a 1GB SD card. 

It arrived today and so far I am very happy, here are a few of the reasons why:

  • Great phone, good media player, great Lotus Notes integration, the touch sensitive screen is easy to use with my small fingers, so I hardly need the stylus.  Replaces everything I sold in one device and adds a phone into the bargain.

I made a few upgrades:

  • Using an existing licence for mNotes that I had purchased to sync with my Ipaq …

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InfoView

A week ago I blogged a little about InfoPath and the fact that Bill Gates had said that InfoPath will probably be the closest thing today to the dominant Microsoft forms technology moving forward,  so Bill why not just buy InfoView and leave InfoPath for forms design and offline usage scenarios.  What’s InfoView:

With InfoView your organisation can:

  • Publish InfoPath forms to the web – providing external users who do not have InfoPath on their desktops the same rich and dynamic user experience of InfoPath forms with web forms
  • Leverage XML standards to capture data via web forms and route data into back-end systems with no manual operation

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The business case for portable computers

Just recently I read a blog post (which I can no longer find) that cast doubt on the business case for portable computers.  The basic argument went like this:

  • Portable users worked for 14% more hours
  • Portable users produced 13% more work
  • Therefore portable users were 1% less efficient

Assuming I remember this correctly it seems a pretty strange analysis, so here is my counter analysis.  First the case for portables and productivity:

  • Portable users do more hours when they have a portable device because it allows them to work when they would otherwise be undertaking some leisure activity, depending on the portable device in questions, these times are most often, whilst waiting in airports, travelling by train, sitting in front of the TV etc.
  • Portable users do more hours because its easier to “just spend an hour” working at the weekend, than it is to drive to work and do it there
  • Portable users spend more time with access to time critical information sources, email, IM etc and so respond faster reducing lead-times, and improving decision making
  • Portable users make better use of their time in the office, processing email, expenses and other low low importance high volume tasks tend to …

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Paperless, the enduring dream of computing

I remember writing my first “paper reduction” based business case about 15 years ago, and using the “paperless office” phrase in a business case for the first time about a decade ago, it’s interesting to see how much “progress” we have made.  It seems that the average office worker in the USA now consumes over 12,000 sheets of paper per year!  In cost terms that’s probably well in excess of $500 a year. 

Last year I had the opportunity question my own usage of paper and was staggered by the extent to which I depended on it.  I also came across an interesting article that discussed why no one seems interested in solving the problem which I discussed in my blog last year. 

However I am now able to say that I live an almost paper free life, and briefly here are the things that have made it possible:

  • I use a Tablet PC for all reading and reviewing
  • I use a 3 screen environment at home which means I have plenty of screen real estate available to have multiple documents open at the same time
  • I have a great scanner, and the even better PaperPort Pro which lets me scan every …