Bloggy Hell

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Online GTD (Getting Things Done) services are so hot right now - Hey, I’ve released one.

But I would put money on the fact that most of them originated by the author abusing a spreadsheet at some point and for good reason. Creative use of a spreadsheet can allow you to experiment with different systems until you find one that fits.. Here is my tip for easy and effective job scheduling using nothing more than Excel or Google Spreadsheets (or what ever spreadsheet software you may choose).

The following goes shows you how to setup the system I use for planning my day using Excel:

1. Create a new spreadsheet
2. Click on the top-left hand corner, so that all cells highlight. Drag the right and bottom columns of the first cell to form a square. I like 150 px. All of the other cells in the spread sheet should follow.
3. Click the Format Menu and select Cells. Select the Alignment tab. Check the Word Wrap check box and change the vertical alignment to top
4. Enter the days of the week down the left hand side
5. Start entering your tasks for the week! I like to put the estimated or allocated hours in brackets and re-ordering the task so the most urgent ones are towards to left.
6. Once you completed the task, Click the cell that contains the task, Click the Format menu, and select Cells, then the font tab. Check the strikethrough checkbox.

If you need to shuffle things around, you can easily cut and paste cells. Need to add notes? Right click on the cell, and add some notes - A small red triangle will appear in the top right corner of the cell.

What is your favourite GTD scheduling tip?

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At Bam, I’ve had a second 19″ Dell LCD sitting idle on my desk for a while. Why has it been idle? Because the video card on my desktop doesn’t support multiple monitors. This was quite depressing as I love dual monitors, but I didn’t have time to find a card that would work for me (My box is half height, and only supports PCI express severely limiting my card choices).

Then I discovered a little piece of software called Maxivista, which allows you to use a second computer as a virtual video card. It just so happens that my laptop supports an additional monitor as well as the built in laptop and since I take it to work most days it was a perfect candidate for the Maxivista treatment. By downloading the Pro version (about $50AU) I managed to set up THREE, count them THREE monitors! The image below shows my setup:

The way it works is simple, yet ingenious - on the host (or server) you install the “virtual video cards”, which is just a software driver. The drivers appear to the host as a normal video card. You need to start a virtual card for each virtual monitor you want to support (I setup two). Then on the client/s you install a small app, which receives the video signal. I run two different instances of the software on my laptop, so I get two different monitors.

The lag is surprisingly low! For day-to-day development work, you don’t notice it at all. I was watching a YouTube video on the second monitor today and it was pretty smooth, although you wouldn’t be able to watch a DVD or play a game, but it is still pretty darn impressive!
I’d also recommend installing UltraMon - it allows you to add a discrete taskbar to each window, which makes organising you desktop even easier. I have my IDE in one window, a test browser in my second and my “Getting stuff done” stuff (time tracking, task lists etc) on my third. It is panoramic bliss!