One of the things I sometimes like to do when I do not have the time for a long and topic specific post is to do a few short blurbs on some things that have been capturing my attention lately. This is one of those times…

  • One |of my new year resolutions is to try to dress better. I have actually made this a resolution in years past but have not been very good with the followthrough. I love nice clothes and love to wear them but more often than not simply find it easier to throw on jeans and a t-shirt. This goal has been helped by the discovery of the clothier Kuhlman. They have very fine, Italian tailored clothing for reasonable prices. I have bought three of their french cuffed shirts in the past week. Beautiful fabric at prices that were hard to believe. Paired with dress slacks or even chinos and one is sure to walk just a little taller.
  • Speaking of resolutions, I recently had an epiphany. Following the GTD principle of vertical mapping, the need to have yearly resolutions is taken care of by 30,000 ft. goals. These are the goals that are supposed to be 12 to 18 months in focus anyway and if your daily actions and projects are in alignment with this, as I have discussed here before, than your resolutions will naturally flow through and be part of a regular review process. Therefore, stop making resolutions and start getting things done.
  • Merlin Mann at my personal fave 43folders has been running an excellent “resolutions” based series of posts called “Fresh Starts and Modest Changes” that have cover many interesting topics including:


    Modest Change: Learn the qualified “yes”

    Modest Change: Cancel something

    Fresh Start: The Email DMZ

    All well worth the read as always.

  • I have recently been playing around with an mindmapping and brainstorming application called Pyramid by MindCad. It is a simple and straight forward mind mapping application with a good tutorial and solid feel. I am hoping to see more applications of this sort when I am out at Macworld next week but so far have like what I have seen with this one.
  • My fave webapp company 37 signals has been teasing us once again with the promise of two more great applications:

    Sunrise: A web based “CRM-ish” tool to help small businesses manage their contacts and customer relationships.

    Campfire: A web based communication and collaboration tool.

    I can hardly wait for Sunrise as I think it will be just the kind of thing I need to help me with Machine Methods. Not sure how much I may use Campfire but I have been surprised at how much I have used Writeboard even if just for personal use.

That is all for now. I will try to do some posting from Macworld next week. Considering that Bethany will not be out until Wednesday I should have few distractions and lots of late and lonely nights for writing.