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Posted 3 months, 1 week ago at 10:29 pm. 0 comments
I sometimes like to "micro-plan" my day’s events using Microsoft Outlook, to plan for a series of consecutive 10 or 15 minute tasks. To switch to this view requires a convoluted series of mouse clicks, and then an equally time consuming task to revert to the usual time resolution.
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Zoomed-out View
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I created an Autohotkey script that allows you to use the control-minus and control-equals (remember it’s below the plus key,) to instantly zoom in and out of your Outlook calendar. I would prefer to use the standard control-mouse wheel zoom, but for unexplained reasons, the script became unreliable in that configuration.
Download the executable, or see the source:
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Posted 3 months, 1 week ago at 7:32 am. 1 comment
Lifehack.org has a great article on managing perfectionism,”Getting to Good Enough.”
And at the New York Times, a similar article discusses a small study that showed how spending too much time spent making optimal choices robs us of often hidden opportunity costs.
Posted 3 months, 3 weeks ago at 7:37 am. 0 comments
I frequently send one-line emails and/or text messages to my wife throughout the day. I configured Launchy so all I have to type is alt-space, cherylemail, tab, and the contents of the short email.
1. Download and install Blat (a command-line mail client.)
2. Add a new Launchy runner command (see image below.) In the Program field, enter the path to the Blat executable.
3. Use something like this in the arguments field: (Don’t miss the leading hyphen.)
- -to “yourfriend@domain.com” -f myemail@mydomain.com -subject “Quick Note” -body “$$”
Posted 4 months, 1 week ago at 3:54 pm. 0 comments
I had been racking my brain for an easy solution to be able to write down the ideas I think of in the shower. Then one day, I realized I already had the solution in the bathroom. I commandeered my daughter’s bathtub crayons, and now whenever I need to write something down, I write it on the shower wall. Plus my wife and I write each other love notes.
Posted 4 months, 1 week ago at 3:10 pm. 2 comments
With my recent move to a paperless office, I decided I to start doing backups more consistently and to find an online solution for this. Previously, I had been using an IDE to USB cable
to sporadically do important backups by manually copying important data like photos, my Outlook file, etc. to an old hard drive. Then I put the drive in my fire safe and lock it.
I found out about Mozy, an online backup service that comes with great software and allows you up to 2GB of free online backups. It has been working great for me. I split off my really big files into a separate folder, and keep those backed up locally in the fire safe, but 99% of my scanned files are now backed up online automatically at no cost.
Posted 4 months, 1 week ago at 6:30 pm. 0 comments
I just scanned a reference book I use daily in the kitchen called Keeping Food Fresh.
I wanted to quickly and easily look up items from the book, so I created a Launchy command that will allow me to look up a string in any Acrobat file, and open the file at the position of the first match.
All I have to do is type “alt-space,” food, tab, and then the search term. The script does the rest.
The Autohotkey script is as follows:
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Posted 4 months, 2 weeks ago at 5:38 pm. 0 comments
I use ListPro as my main list repository. To quickly add items to my lists, I type “alt-space, tab, todo, tab,” and then whatever line of text I want to add to my todo list (groceries, tasks, etc.)
To accomplish this, I use Launchy with the below Autohotkey script. Inside Launchy, use the runner plug-in with the path to the below Autohotkey script as the command and “$$” (including quotes) as the parameter.
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