Bose Quietcomfort headphones, like mine

The Bose Quietcomfort noise canceling headphones are very effective at reducing the overall white noise that I regularly experience in a number of environments.   They’ve been a wonderful way to reduce fatigue while traveling, as well as to protect from hearing loss.

Many years ago, on my first trip back from Japan, I was able to get my companion and I upgraded to business class.   A standard feature for business class is that they loan you the use of Bose QuietComfort headphones.  I’ve played with noise canceling headphones before, but never used a good set on a very long flight.  Having used them on that trip, I’ve been totally converted.   During the flight, I occasionally had to take off the earphones to speak with someone, and I was amazed at the amount of white noise that otherwise happens in the airplane cabin.  It was nearly deafening!  When I landed after 15-20 hours in flight, I was tired, but I did not feel drained.   I was more alert, and felt better overall.

The benefits of  the Quietcomforts were most notable on a large, trans-oceanic flights, but I’ve used them while commuting, and in noisy computer datacenters.    They help on the noisy boston subways, and I notice that I’m not the only ones wearing them.   They don’t solve all the problems, since very noisy squeeling train wheels still get through.  A lot of the more consistent ambient noise vanishes nicely though.  As a bonus, the audio quality is amazing.

I’ve used other noise canceling headphones, and my understanding is that there are other comparable models.   There are also a good number of noise canceling “in ear” or “earbud” headphones, but I’ve never had good experiences with the “in ear” headphones.  In my experience, nothing beats the Bose though.

Available at Amazon

Lately I’ve been reading Getting Things Done by David Allen. It’s the book that has helped so many people become more productive and focused.  Many friends are talking about, and the books and tools seem well worth the money. That said,  I’m still getting the hang of it, but I like the concept, and I’ve already seen benefits.

The general approach is to capture anything and everything that has your attention, and record it somewhere.   That way, your brain can let go of the task to remember it.  From there, the next step is to identify the next action that needs to be taken, as well as finding the desired outcome. Complex tasks should be broken down into smaller, achievable subtasks.   In the course of your organizing, you’ll also structure your task lists and reminders to be in separate categories for different projects, locations, or pieces of your life.   From there, you set up a regular review, looking over what has been accomplished, re-prioritizing tasks, and evaluating newly added tasks.

David Allen summed it up well with:

Get everything out of your head. Make decisions about actions required on stuff when it shows up — not when it blows up. Organize reminders of your projects and the next actions on them in appropriate categories. Keep your system current, complete, and reviewed sufficiently to trust your intuitive choices about what you’re doing (and not doing) at any time.

It’s easy to set up once you know the general structure.   It’s a bit harder to adapt your life to it.   certain tasks, such as “Pay Mortgage” can be nicely repeated, and are pretty isolated.   More complex tasks, such as “build a 747″ are a bit harder to capture.  Fortunately, I don’t have to build a 747, and if I did, I hope wouldn’t be doing it alone.

I’ve been using a tool called iGTD2 as a tool to collect and organize my “things to get done.”   So far, it’s been working very well.   There are tasks  that don’t get captured, or tasks that never quite seem to make it to the “to do now” priority, but I expect that will come with practice and experience.

Power prices have been rising, and in an effort to both become more green, and to keep cost under control, I went looking for a solution that would help me measure my electrical power usage. Enter the kill-a-watt.

I got my kill-a-watt years ago, off Ebay.   This was back before power prices really went through the roof.  Buying this changed how I viewed almost every electrical device in my house.    Knowing how much something draws, what the “phantom draw” is, and how much power it draws over time is a big win.   It was an easy way to figure out that my 10+ year old air conditioner was no where near the efficiency of my newer unit.

The kill-a-watt causes something of an obsession in many people.   Once you have one, you find yourself running around and monitoring everything, and just seeing how much different things draw.    On the whole, I’ve found this to be useful in that even having the general awareness of the power draw and my electricity bill has caused me to be more active in keeping things turned off.  I only wish that it had a serial port.

The kill-a-watt will measure amps, watts, volts, and and kilowatt-hours per hour.

I think this tool is worth the money.   It’s simple, easy to use, and it gives good, valuable information.   It’s also something that raises awareness, and if you’re a geek like me, it will help you lower your electricity bill.

Sadly, I didn’t get to see the dog and pony show that went with the announcements today.   When I was able to get back to a computer, I hit the apple.com website to see what the big releases were.

Looking over the new Macbook and Macbook Pro, so far I like them.   If they really mean it when they say 5 hours of battery life, then I’m very impressed, if not interested.    The LED backlit displays are supposed to be very nice, and I like the look of the new case.   Beyond that, there isn’t much to report.    It’s a little faster.   It’s got better graphics.   They both still only top out at 4GB of ram.    It’s a nice update, but not an earth-shattering one.

I have since had the chance to actually touch and play with one of the new macbooks, and I confess that I’m impressed.    I hadn’t previously be aware of the fact that there is no “traditional” mouse button any more.   It’s gone completely, and the touchpad is now much larger.   To “click” you simply press down where you normally would have pressed on the touchpad button.  The laptop is well built, nicely engineered, and really nice to look at.  The LED-lit screen is bright and crisp.   It’s noticeably lighter than the previous generation.  I’m also very impressed with the big boost in battery life, now allegedly around 5 hours.     But above all, as with many things Apple, it all just works.

Now if only they would update the mac mini!

Seems to me that I should lay down some thoughts as to what I look for when I think of thing things that I write about.   Quality can mean different things to different people, so it seems like I good idea to spell out what I think of when I think of quality.   This will mostly apply to physical objects, but could, in many cases, apply to a service, or a feature.   I may like part of something, but dislike the product on the whole.

There are a few important criteria that makes something stand out:

1. reliability
2. durability
3. flexibility
4. dependability
5. cost
6. utility.

Not every criteria fits every item I talk about.   My iMac has been reliable, flexible, and dependable.  It is probably not the most durable computer out there though, and it’s certainly not the cheapest.   Still, my utility value on it is pretty high.   Perhaps I should start giving “quality ratings” for the things I talk about. 

I recently bought a brand new 24″ 3.06Ghz iMac.    In almost 20 years of working with technology, this is the first new computer that I have ever owned for myself.   I’ve owned more than my share of other computers, from a variety of Apple laptops to a stack of Sun workstations and servers.    They all serve their purpose, and they’ve all been worth the time put into them.   They were, however, all previously owned.    Spending money on a new iMac was a big deal, and more money than I’ve ever spent on a computer, new or used.   A variety of circumstances led to it though, and I decided to take the plunge.

That said, I bought one.    So far, I love it.   Why?   Glad you asked!  Here are a few reasons off the top of my head:

1. 4GB of memory.   Sure, I could get this on other boxes, but this is my first computer with this much memory.   It totally makes the difference.
2. Nice, crisp screen.   It’s very bright and nice to look at.
3. Speed is just not an issue.   Between 4GB of ram and lots of CPU, this box has yet to be slow.
4. Nicely made.   It all just fits together in ways that I like.
5. Rates nicely on power usage.   I’ll give it a reading on my kill-a-watt the next time I reboot.

As for things I don’t like:

1. Leopard.   Most of it is very nice.  Spaces often does the wrong thing, enough so that I’ve considered loading Tiger onto it.
2. Only 4GB of memory!  Clearly this goes both ways. 
3. The keyboard.   I gave up on it.   I’m using a white keyboard from an old G4 tower.   Much nicer, and more what I prefer.

After several months of using it, the iMac has yet to disappoint in any major way.   It’s been rock solid, and can do everything I like.   So far, I’m impressed, and I’ve evangelized to friends about it.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

just pretend there is an old-fashioned “under construction” icon here, ok?

The initial articles will likely change also.   I’m still getting a feel for this, and having some content to work with helps a lot.