Single-tasking

I am writing an article on Single-Tasking vs. Multi-tasking. The article (will be my first using pinboard to research) is going to go over types of productivity, and I am going to hack myself to do nothing but single-task. As little multi-tasking as possible. If I am on a call, I am calling someone. If I am studying, means nothing but studying. This means, and I gasp at myself, no music.

Oh crap. Finals start tomorrow, my school ended last Friday. This weekend is considered by many students one of the most stressful, painful, and worrisome weekends in school. As I work out an "end of school/summer!" post for thingsthatarewin.com - a side project of mine, I am really freaking out. So what is a better way to mend some stress than a nice afternoon of mind-hacking!? I will be going single-task only.

Here is what I usually do:

1. Turn on XM 56, Sirious 17 JamOn station. The best radio station in the world.


2. Sit with my phone on my right, my Ipod on my left. TV is playing in the background, and depending on weather or not I am wearing my noise cancelling headphones, I can usually hear the sopranos going. (hooray for parents trying to watch all of them in a month)


3. Place books in front of me. Computer to left. Dog nearby. I make room on my very cluttered desk


4. Study

Here is what I am going to attempt to do

1. No music


2. Clear Desk to be empty


3. Nothing playing on Noise-Cancelling Headphones (I thought about buying 'Music for airports' but I do not have enough money. In the future


4. Study

Hell to the yes. I will see how it goes. The final article, when I finish writing it, will be part of my 'Augmented Conscience' Project; A collection of essays, rants, and other things with a humorous tone.

Bradford Can't Draw

http://www.bradfordsdog.info

This is what I do when I am bored. Single Serving Sites are awesome. Case in point: thatsnotironic.com

So (for science!) I wanted to collect as many different ways of drawing dog's that I could. I asked bradford to draw me a dog. He said he couldn't draw. I said draw anyway. He did. Bradford's dog (the one with "Chernobyl" incorrectly written above it) was born. Later we did other "Bradford Experiments", having bradford attempt to draw chickens, cats, and even a giraffe. In his defense, Bradford's cat wasn't... completely horrible. We love you, and your inability to draw, Bradford.

If I ever start a production company, I am naming it "Bradfords Dog Productions" and an image of the dog.

Bookmarking

I have recenttly switched from social bookmarking (delicious) to anitsocial bookmarking (pinboard.in). The two sites share similar roots, pinboard being a spawn of delicious to fit needs delicious could not give.

Here is why: I love every social aspect of the web. Communicating with friends, sharing links, ect, ect. I spend most of my web life (when not working, software dev-ing, writing) inside of Google Reader. I subscribe to over a hundred feeds, and read all content almost every day. It is very impressive (and would not be possible if it were not for Google Reader). Anyway, my shared items from Greader is imported into a tumblr blog (ya-rly.tumblr.com); I recommend having people just follow me from within google reader. (go to people you follow, type in hunterdyar@gmail.com, laugh)

Anyway, when I am reasearching a project, I am missing a place to store my links, I generally keep them in a google doc file named accordingly to whatever project. I use Google docs for all my docs thing. running Ubuntu 60% of the time in a dual boot, (7 for adobe, gaming), i do not even have Office installed. I even uninstalled open office. I digress. Delicious does not work for project reasearch, and evernote failed me with lack of organizing features. In the proccess of reasearching multi-touch displays, i found myself storing hundreds of links, videos, and other information on the web. From Flex, Flash, Acrylic, Lasers, Projectors, and many other topics, my list was quite extensive. I shared the doc to a friend helping me on the project, and he gawked. Horrible. Google Docs is awesome, and I use it for research, but not an ideal solution.

In walks pinboard. with a $6.34 sign up fee (as of signing up, price goes up with each new user), I looked over the features, and was sold. I have not had a chance to play with it yet, but it beats linksoftheday.posterous.com (for non-funny shared items).
That linksoftheday blog is in its 4rth form. The first one being nighly emails; first just to my mother, then my sister, then other people who wanted interesting content but did not want to search the internet for it. Anyway, i have yet to set up a system, but i hope to have certain tagged items be shared publicly in the links of the day way that is what it is. Whatever. Know you know why my increasingly social web life (hdyar.com, online identity established!) is turned private: for research and not spamming my friend.

pinboard also had the fastest tech support i have ever received. I sent an email about sign-up trouble, and then refreshed my email inbox. A response was waiting. 38 seconds after I sent the email, and it was a personally typed response from the man who runs the entire site telling me he had manually activated my account. I love it already.

Hoorah for the first post of burning squirrel, which I hope to use to help me track my mind-hacks, projects and other web thoughts. Like a short version of Augmented Conscience - Which I stopped doing publicly, as I want to turn the writings (essays) into an published book.