Browsing articles tagged with " efficiency"

IE6: Internet Explorer 6

Mar 20, 2009 // by Colin Yeung // Opinion // No Comments

Microsoft has released IE8 yesterday (March 19th 2009), which ostensibly means the slow (and long overdue) demise of IE6, which still, by anyones measure is on WAY to many computers out in the WWW. You can download it at Microsoft’s Internet Explorer page.

So. What novel ways to coax your site visitors to upgrade? This was spotted by my colleague Simon Julian this afternoon.

Hugs for Monsters goes straight for the jugular – I almost spilt my Friday afternoon beer on my desk after reading some of these in his entry Overly Judgmental IE6 Splash Pages

In Simon’s estimation: Funny. I concur.

http://hugsformonsters.com/

Time Management

Mar 19, 2009 // by Colin Yeung // Interesting & Noteworthy, Opinion // No Comments

Writer Chris Hardwick reveals the inside story of his feature on the art of organizational self-help. Spoiler: After three methods and six weeks, he’s still a little disorganized.

I read this article in my hardcopy of Wired Magazine (January 2009) last night Diary of a Self-Help Dropout: Flirting With the 4-Hour Workweek by Chris Hardwick – and got a real laugh out of it, as his summary of modern day time management philosophies gelled very closely with my own. He spends time assessing 3 different time management approaches. The context of his reference to “Get off my lawn” was hilarious. However, in reading this, the article got me thinking about time management in general. I’ve been called/accused/labelled over the years as a “Schedulling Nazi”, and variations of (pick one): “Hyper/Extremely/Super/Irrationally Organised”. More accurately put, “Anal Retentive” is as apt a classification as any.

In saying that, since I was a teenager baking bread at 3am at my first job, I have run on the below rule set, which has served me pretty well.

168 hours in a week (7 days x 24 hours)
42-49 hours I’m asleep (7 nights x 6-7 hours each night)
10 hours I’m travelling to/from work (5 days x 2 hours each day)
_________________________
116 hours left, which occupies:

35-45 hours at work (5 days x 7-8 hours each day)
71-81 play, eat, talk, read, interact, look, hear, smell, touch etc.

That is ALOT of time. I don’t care what anyone says, 70 hours to do your own thing is alot, no matter which way you cut it. Luckily I also catch the train, which allows me to read a fair bit, listen to music and on the odd occasion chat to a random somebody (sometimes my dad, sometimes my boss, sometimes a neighbour).

The comfort I take from the above is that I don’t try and make more time. That just ain’t going to happen, much as some other people may try and believe it. So as a conseqence, what prescious time I have, I try and make every second count – type quicker, read quicker, talk (often too much) quicker and cut to the chase on what is important to me. This extends to interactivity – why hang out with people I dont think much of? I would much rather work and spend time with people who I respect, enjoy their company, opinion and as I have alluded too earlier “someone who i can have a beer with”.

The approaches which Hardwick assessed were: