Advanced Search

Akatombo Web Log

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Note to Self - SVN

Just a quick note to myself as I study up on Subversion and prepare to replace CVS:
From the Subversion book:

NOTE
While your working copy is “just like any other collection of files and directories on your system”, you need to let Subversion know if you’re going to be rearranging anything inside of your working copy. If you want to copy or move an item in a working copy, you should use svn copy or svn move instead of the copy and move commands provided by your operating system. We’ll talk more about them later in this chapter.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Paypal Certificate Expired

Did Paypal let their secure certificate lapse?  I’m guessing somebody is in trouble.

Friday, March 03, 2006

Change Multiple Text Layers in Photoshop

A long time ago (like over a year) I sent a photoshop tip to Corrie Haffly (sic?) who, at least at the time, was running the Sitepoint design blog.  She published it, and I forgot about it, but a referrer in my logs reminded me of it.  Since I use this technique more than just about any other less-than-commonly-known photoshop trick, I thought I’d share it here:  Change Multiple Text Layers in Photoshop

Efficiency Tips

Reprint from my personal blog:

One of the hardest things about running a small business based on providing (mostly) one-time services to clients is that you generally tend to either have way too much or nothing to do.  This can make it really hard to get into a good work rhythm, making those extra-busy periods that much harder.  An added difficulty is that I have a really hard time focusing well on work in the morning, being much more able to work late into the night.  UltraGirl’s job starts early in the morning and ends in the early evening so if I want to spend time with her, and I do, I need to conform with her work schedule as much as I can.  It appears that I’m heading into the over-capacity period in the cycle, so I need to figure out how to make myself as effective as possible.  A few things I have been trying out, that help out when I can keep doing them consistently:

1. Go to bed early, and wake up a couple hours before I need to get to work to give my body time to get going.
2. Try to break my work into small pieces, and break my day into short periods of finely focused concentration
3. It is OK to drink coffee, but don’t drink 6 cups.
4. disconnect from the Internet, when the task I’m working on doesn’t directly require it, forcing myself to write down the ideas that I find I want to research—saving that distraction for later, and freeing myself from the interruptions provided by IM and e-mail.

So here’s where you come in.  What techniques do you utilize to optimize your effectiveness and efficiency?

Here is one response I received to get things rolling:
Lists. Definitely daily lists are good. Make your new list for tomorrow at the end of today, when everything outstanding is still fresh in your mind. It’s encouraging to see things ticked off of them, and they help to show all the tasks at hand and prevent you from getting too distracted.

A clean desk. Remove everything that’s not related to the project you’re working on. Put it in folders, on the floor, on a side table, on the windowsill, where ever you can’t actually see it.

Now you try. What techniques would you recommend for making sure you get a lot of work done.