I also am a “Learner” and related to this is the desire to share what I’ve found with others. But how does one share the progress of a set of problems, their progress, and then their solutions?

A website.. of some kind.

I tried using my blog for this.. but then I get myself all confused when I try to use tagging as a sorting feature. I start to think about the organizing I have to do first and what type of tag I might remember later.. and I give up trying to capture that idea.

Currently I have my 100 projects. These are pages, and I made them so they auto-update the date, but then there is no ’sub-update’ of each little thing and I have to type them in myself with a date. Also, I have to basically hand-type these little codes to myself so I can find them easier. There has GOT to be an easier way!

But having ALL of my stuff in my blog makes it look REALLY messy and then I forget the process I’ve created for organizing and sorting all those problems.

Now this is a problem.

My options?
-create a new blog that ONLY deals with the 100 issues. Then I could have an RSS feed come off from there and show the progress
-join a website that offers similar things.. then I’d be in a community and not have to re-invent the wheel.. but then I’d have to change my process to whatever they already have set up (43things.com comes to mind)
-a wiki of some sort would show every update on a subject, but it too might get a little messy.

I also want to have flexibility to have access to it on my macbook, online and locally on my iPhone. Having a webpage would take care of the first two, and I’d just have to deal with the times I need to access the content or edit it when I’m underground on the metro.

Sometimes my ‘problems’ I discover relate to each other. Computer program, website and iPhone apps are all related in that they deal with how I organize my technology. It might be nice to have a way to see those as a group. This is not as important though.

In a way this is me trying to be very scientific about things. I want to list my progress and solutions so I can look back and see my ‘accomplished’ projects (so I don’t get frustrated at the never ending ‘to do’ items.

Currently, when I use THINGS on the mac and iPhone, my old to dos vanish. Then I have to keep a separate ‘resource’ folder that has those solutions I have found.

Also too it gets my normal chores and to dos all mixed up with my more complicated projects that I’m working on. Also getting even more crossover with my desires-wants-wishlists on how I’d like my life experience to be.

*whew* this feels long winded, but someday I’ll be glad that I captured all these current frustrations. And I CAN’T be alone with this! Sometimes it feels like it. Lists seem like such an obvious way to identify the next steps to accomplish a goal, and not having them seems like it would all have to stay in my brain. I’d like to think up new stuff rather than brew on the same processess all the time. I think I’d get stagnent and set in my way of thinking. Then it would be difficult to change becasue whatever process I had been brewing on would be a habit and I wouldn’t remember what I had or hadn’t tried in the past and I’d end up duplicating those same mistakes. Then my life time would be wasted on the same fruitless processes.

Anyway. I’m going to do some timeboxing as I might let the wee hours slip away and currently I think I can use this time most efficiently to lay out my plan for this week/month/year/life.

–now to figure out how to write up problems and systematically solve them– (because a blog is too messy with tags)

My website used to be the only place for this. I would handcode a page and not worry about things like formatting and layout. This was a VERY tedious way of doing things. I had the time back in early college. I don’t have that luxury now that I’m working all the time to eat and pay rent.

Then I used to post on livejournal. They were bought and sold so often I didn’t trust them, so I took the jump to wordpress. Which opened up all possibilities and all sorts of troubleshooting to get things the exact way I wanted them.

I’ve been trying to make the job of updating easier on myself, but it has gotten so complicated! A blog post gets lost so easily- so I’m trying to make pages now.

But I don’t have an easy way to post each new page on hmatt.com. I would rather have a page to point to or something, but I rather like the new collapsible sidebar I created. That I have to handcode though! = (

Now that some of my pages are updated in iWeb, I find it to be such a hassle to update and reload to my ftp (iWeb 09 does this, but their filestructure is SO strange and messes up the way things should look.

A lot of my pages are similar in nature. And although I could make one large page, I’m opting to link all similar pages together by hand. I set up my posts to do this automatically by using tags, but pages are supposed to be more finalized than the fleeting thoughts of a post.

Anyway, I gather there are very few people out there who find this interesting- but you never know! I know I’ve written these things time and again.. but there is the trouble of posts. I can’t remember when I said them or want to take the time to sift through it all to find and link back to this post.

I wish there was a single link for my pages… but until I find it it is all seen on any of my blog pages

hmatt.com/blog

However, I want to be able to have a list of my folders and what I intend to keep in them. I’m wasting a lot of time trying to find what I’m looking for on my computer. There are so many programs and tools to write things I frequently misplace them.

Hmm. Someone must have a program out there that puts files in an outline and drop-down type of list.. if not someone should create it.

Stickies don’t allow me to scroll as there are no sidebars. I have to use my arrow keys all the time. Also, as far as I know it can’t auto show a date (the information is somewhere though because I can hover over the windows and they’ll list creation date etc.

Textclips can’t be seen with quicklook, but I used to use them to drag the text out of a textedit document to avoid the trouble of saving it.

I’ve really come to like stickies though. I do wish they would sync with mobileme though.

Post
-able to easily add and flow with thoughts
-can connect to others
-autoupdates facebook
-..but then if I mispell or need to update a page I have two places where I’m supposed to go unless I added the post to the don’t post into FB category (UN? or Twitter)
-I end up writing the same things over and over because I tagged them and tossed them out into the abyss before.

SEE hmatt.com/blog/post-versus-a-page/

CONS
- whenever I’m at parties people always ask me about mac stuff. I don’t mind it most of the time because they are my friends and I want to help them out. However, it limits the types of conversations I have with people. It always leads back to tech and they are either for or against apple. ‘For apple’ and we align or I have to explain why probably the developers did what they did. Against apple and I have to defend the entire time. … Fortunately I’m not an apple genius so I don’t have all the super tech knowledge why things stop working so I can deflect those questions.
- I noticed earlier this year I had stopped trying to research computer stuff on my own and I’d wait to do it while at work instead… it kind of took the fun out of it. I was getting paid, but the passion went out of looking at those forums and reading about tips and tricks. That happens to every profession though. I can imagine acting being like that.
- most important CON is that I am too busy full-time to pursue acting. WHAT! Crazy talk right!? But I’m always so exhausted from thinking at work and especially having to wake up early to ride the metro. Sure I could try to transfer to another store.. but I need to address my other passions in life aside from tech. Even then there is no way I can remain full time and try to get auditions.

I do like working there, but man.. you know how some days at work get. Plus I’ve been down because I feel so stuck. I want to make this year different- major positive change.

It’s like that last analogy- a t-shirt could be categorized as a top or an undergarment. Hmm.

Anyway, I was thinking about how I process information and I came up with some typical types of things I’m writing about. Those will be categories for now (although they are probably supposed to be tags… whatever).

Pros and Cons will be me trying to suss stuff out. And they are all ways of me organizing information in my head so they’ll go under organizing too..

yeah.

Earlier this year my grandmother’s house caught fire. All their remaining stuff was sent away to get cleaned and boxed up. The day after I went up there was the second day they’d been in their new house. Wow. It was surreal. From the outside it looked the same, but all the rooms were completely different, and the only thing that looked remotely the same was the whitewashed basement. Wow. Crazy man.

Anyway, I spent a lot of the time helping them get everything back in order as soon as possible. I took all their ‘too sort’ stuff and put it below. Things like books, cook books, papers, photos and VHS tapes. That stuff I want to go through at some point because there are several home movies that I want to convert.

As for photos I had this plan. I wanted to show my grandpa how to scan each photo. Then I saw how many, many, many photos there were so I looked up a service to scan them for us.

Fortunately many exist, and I went with Scanmyphotos.com – I bought three boxes for $250 which will get me 3 dvds of scanned pics. That isn’t counting the ones that are still in albums that I need to take apart.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that I’m probably the only one in our family willing to do all this work. However, there are no ‘backups’ of those memories and I want to make something that will allow all those pictures to be preserved.

I didn’t want to get these scanned pics (at 300 dpi) mixed with everything else, so I had signed my grandpa up for a flickr account. This way I’ll have a backup, with tags of us all. Hooray!

It will take me years to complete though. This first phase was all the loose photos, and next time I visit will be to take apart the albums.

The rest of my trip was trying to reduce the amount of junk that has accumulated at my parent’s place. I’m part of the problem there as I have 30 plastic bins with books, toys, memorabilia, tshirts and papers. Ugh. Such an overwhelming task.

Now that I’m back at my place I’ve been all inspired to clean up my place. I am starting to accumulate all sorts of paper trash that I hope a NeatReciepts scanner will fix.
–
My grandmother was in the hospital for surgery to get a metal rod in her leg so she could walk around (she has cancer in her leg). The last time I saw her was in bed waiting to go in.

I’m so grateful that my grandmother was able to be such a big part of my life when I was younger. I was lucky to have such a wonderful childhood.
–
Okay. Time to clean up some of this mess at my place now.

Tonight I may go swing dancing. Instead of napping, which is what I feel like doing now, I intend to put all of my stuff together. It is time to really go through what I need to keep and sell or toss.

Ugh, the task is daunting. Ah, but think how free I will feel once a huge chunk of junk is gone.

.. chunk of junk.. that’s funny.