The download from Canonical only took about an hour – not bad considering it was completed within two hours of “Heron” being released.
I had already prepared the computer as best I could, defragmenting my Windows partitions to create a good contiguous free area on the hard drive (this was to be an install on a computer without Ubuntu already on it, I have “Gusty Gibbon” on another computer). Burned the live cd, popped it in and Ubuntu booted up. Went to the install option, and that is where the problems began. The system froze at the partitioning stage. Powered off, back into Windows to check everything still OK (it was) and decided to load from within Windows using the Wubi installer instead (avoiding the need to partition the drive). That worked well apart from one thing - the maximum resolution I could get was 800 x 600.
I therefore tried a normal install again. This time it worked fine and I created a new 20Gb partition and installed “Heron” to it, but with no change to the resolution. I then went back into Windows and removed the Wubi installation. Back to Ubuntu and tried to max out the visual effects setting which prompted the download of a driver which I hoped would cure things but actually made them worse, I was now down to 640 x 480!
I had previously used a “Gutsy” live cd in this computer to partition the drive and remembered getting a very high resolution, so I tried that next, hoping that installing “Gutsy”, getting the settings right and then hitting the “upgrade to 8.04” button would solve the problem. Took a very deep breath and crossed my fingers as the partitioner on the “Gusty” live cd is a bit more basic that that on the “Heron” one, and my choices were “use entire hard drive” and nuke all my data (obviously not a good idea) or use the rather unfriendly manual partitioner. Eventually managed to overwrite the “Heron” partition, and install “Gutsy” without any disasters. This worked fine, the resolution was actually too high now however when I set the visual effects to “extra” (and the system downloaded the new driver) it dropped to a comfortable level of 1024 x 768.
Hit the “upgrade to 8.04” button and after a longish wait – it worked! Bit of a struggle, but worth it in the end. No idea why I had all the screen resolution problems though.
Saturday, 26 April 2008
Friday, 18 April 2008
On... Getting Things Done
Getting Things Gone (GTD) is a great concept - who wouldn't want to be more efficient? - but as the GTD movement expands into an industry, far, far too much time can be wasted messing about with different GTD systems or trying out GTD spreadsheets or applications, rather defeating the original purpose! Having just reviewed a number of GTD blogs and watching GTD videos on YouTube, I find myself left with additional decisions to make (which, if any, of the ideas do I adopt?) and a good deal of time has passed without actually doing anything constructive.
So, for what it's worth (and remembering that what works for one person won't for another depending on personality, needs and technology available) here are some GTD methods I use:
1) e-mail. I try to clear my work e-mail every day so my in-box is empty . I check it mid-morning and again mid- afternoon. Anything that can't be dealt with there and then gets printed off and put in my physical in-tray (usually only one or two items a day). At the end of the day all the read/actioned e-mail is moved to a separate folder for archiving (I periodically delete anything over 6 months old from this folder). Clearing out all the day's actioned e-mails in one go is very satisfying.
2) text messages – it is almost always faster to reply to a text message with a phone call / voice mail than to try to send a text back – phone keyboards were not designed to type on!
3) telephone calls and messages and voice mail – I write the initials of the caller and notes in an A5 spiral-bound notebook as I am listening. If the task can be dealt with there and then it is and the entry is crossed out. If not it is left until dealt with and then crossed out. At the end of the day any a line is (literally) drawn in the book and any items not actioned are carried forward to the next day – a good incentive to get them all done during the day. The book is also a useful archive of work done.
4) diary – I do not use an electronic diary any more, a paper diary has the advantage that you can stuff outstanding work into it.
5) be fanatical about organising the files on your hard drive, don't let the computer do it for you. What I aim for is to be easily able to find a specific file by using a logical hierarchical system, and also to be able to identify the contents of the file from its name (and I don't rely on indexing programmes, they encourage messiness).
6) be as computer / operating system / program neutral as possible. It was painful experience when Quicken withdrew from the UK market – I had several years of financial data in a program I assumed would be supported indefinitely. To maximise future proofing, I try to keep important documents in open formats if possible (even if it is just a pdf).
7) don't skip lunch – output increases when you have had food and a break from your desk.
8) make your GTD system as simple as possible!
And in the spirit of simplicity I will give just one link:
http://zenhabits.net/
(Thoreau said 'Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes' – perhaps now we should 'Distrust any enterprise that requires a new GTD system').
So, for what it's worth (and remembering that what works for one person won't for another depending on personality, needs and technology available) here are some GTD methods I use:
1) e-mail. I try to clear my work e-mail every day so my in-box is empty . I check it mid-morning and again mid- afternoon. Anything that can't be dealt with there and then gets printed off and put in my physical in-tray (usually only one or two items a day). At the end of the day all the read/actioned e-mail is moved to a separate folder for archiving (I periodically delete anything over 6 months old from this folder). Clearing out all the day's actioned e-mails in one go is very satisfying.
2) text messages – it is almost always faster to reply to a text message with a phone call / voice mail than to try to send a text back – phone keyboards were not designed to type on!
3) telephone calls and messages and voice mail – I write the initials of the caller and notes in an A5 spiral-bound notebook as I am listening. If the task can be dealt with there and then it is and the entry is crossed out. If not it is left until dealt with and then crossed out. At the end of the day any a line is (literally) drawn in the book and any items not actioned are carried forward to the next day – a good incentive to get them all done during the day. The book is also a useful archive of work done.
4) diary – I do not use an electronic diary any more, a paper diary has the advantage that you can stuff outstanding work into it.
5) be fanatical about organising the files on your hard drive, don't let the computer do it for you. What I aim for is to be easily able to find a specific file by using a logical hierarchical system, and also to be able to identify the contents of the file from its name (and I don't rely on indexing programmes, they encourage messiness).
6) be as computer / operating system / program neutral as possible. It was painful experience when Quicken withdrew from the UK market – I had several years of financial data in a program I assumed would be supported indefinitely. To maximise future proofing, I try to keep important documents in open formats if possible (even if it is just a pdf).
7) don't skip lunch – output increases when you have had food and a break from your desk.
8) make your GTD system as simple as possible!
And in the spirit of simplicity I will give just one link:
http://zenhabits.net/
(Thoreau said 'Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes' – perhaps now we should 'Distrust any enterprise that requires a new GTD system').
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