gtuckerkellogg

My current system is emacs org-mode for my inbox and all computer-based action lists, and Todoist for anything I need to carry with me. Since much of my work is done in emacs, org-mode makes the most sense for me. But honestly, the GTD ecosystem has gotten a bit polluted by really good team-based apps.

At the time GTD first came out, there was more of a hard line between personal task lists and team-based responsibilities, or maybe it at least seemed that way because the technology was so limiting.

That said, technology is not the solution; a decent process is. Google image search "one page GTD summary" or "GTD workflow" and the key features are technology-agnostic: a single inbox for actions, a good decision making process, and context-dependent action lists so you don't wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat about something you forgot when you had the opportunity to do it. In the last 15 years, my favorite GTD systems have been a Moleskine notebook and my old Palm Pilot. I've changed my systems over time, but not because the current systems are particularly better in general; they are better for me in context.

I was on an America West flight to Phoenix in 1999 when David Allen sat next to me. The passenger compartment was bare bones -- no overhead vents, for example -- and I was in a pissy mood. Allen was not. He immediately struck me as the most seasoned, at ease traveller I had ever seen. After he got himself adjusted I asked him if he travelled a lot. He smiled and showed me his United frequent flyer card. It had his name, and "Five Million Miles" embossed on it. I asked him what the hell he was doing on this crappy America West flight. He was flying from Geneva to his home in California, and had missed his connection, so United put him on the next available flight.

He was a "CEO coach" at the time and, while I normally don't badger strangers on planes with questions, we ended up talking for a good part of the flight. When his book came out, I recognised his picture on the jacket, and wrote him an email. He remembered me, and offered to get together for a glass of wine when he was in Boston.

Of course I got his book, and of course it changed my thinking. I wouldn't be writing this if it hadn't. I have ADD, and am also deeply suspicious of self-help literature. I couldn't stomach the moralizing of Stephen Covey and his ilk. But GTD, and Allen as a person, work just great for me, and work with my ADD. I've tried variants, electronic and paper, but everything that works for me is within the GTD ecosystem.

It (and the book on which it is based) are amazing. Virtually every older applied mathematician has a copy of the original Abramowitz and Stegun, which was supported by the National Bureau of Standards, prior to NIST. The successor (http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/mathematics/ab...) is really an incredible achievement. The reviews are hilarious. One notes "The book is quite heavy; for convenience, one might be inclined to place it on a stand, as with an unabridged dictionary". Another review begins "This is like trying to review the bible".

The online version also lets you get LaTeX for everything, and has many other features. But the print version is a thing of beauty.

In full disclosure, the Editor in Chief and Mathematics Editor, who devoted the last 13 years of his professional life to the project, was my stepfather.

As good as that is, see this: http://dlmf.nist.gov/, the online companion to the truly epic NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions, itself the modern successor to Abramowitz and Stegun.

I can see one use case for this family of tools: if the same script could generate either crontab files or launchd agents, so it could generate scheduling files for MacOSX, where crontab is discouraged.

From the review, this book seems like a rehash of Taubes' two excellent and well researched books on the same topics. Taubes was the first to make the broad historical connections that also seem central to this book. Even the book title, "The Big Fat Surprise" is a play on Taubes' famous 2002 New York Times article "What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?". What, if anything is original to this work? From the Economist review, we have no idea.

Obviously, Dover can live where he chooses, and like the places he chooses. I don't begrudge him his preferences. But the shallow armchair-quarterbacking from someone who has clearly made no serious effort to have a substantive experience of a place? That I could do without.

After I posted my comment, I read his Life List, his About page, and other parts of his site, and realised that Dover's entire schtick is to promote an utterly self-absorbed worldview, so the lack of perspective is not really about Singapore.

I've learned to speak Mandarin, but not Malay. I can read and write enough to read the Chinese newspaper and sing karaoke. It's helpful: it breaks down a lot of cultural barriers, and makes chatting with cab drivers more fun. It also makes the Singlish more understandable. There's a lot of Singaporean English that borrows from Chinese word order, which in western English sounds harsh even though the Chinese word order (in Chinese) uses it as an expression of politeness. E.g., "Go to lunch, can or not?"

I'm an American who has lived in Singapore for almost nine years, in two very different jobs, in two very different parts of the city-state. Singapore has a lot of challenges, but the oversimplifications and generalisations in this glib article don't do Singapore or Singaporeans any favours. (I've been here long enough that my spell-check is set to British English).

Let's take National Service (NS). Dover writes: "after graduating, every citizen is required to do active service in the military." This is wrong on at least three points, which is impressive for a sentence that short: 1) NS is not required of all citizens, only men; 2) NS is also required of male permanent residents who turn 18 in Singapore, and 3) it's an age requirement, not a graduation requirement.

He goes on to write that "pride is the result" of the NS requirement, in that part of the article that seems devoted to unqualified praise of Singapore's success. Really? Pride alone? Yes, male Singaporeans are proud of their service in NS, but plenty — especially younger Singaporeans — also resent it, resent the foreigners and women who don't have to do it and who they believe get an upper leg in society as a result. I've had Singaporean men explain away sexual harassment of women — harassment they witnessed first hand — on the grounds of the hazing they received during NS. If "sense of pride" is the only thing Dover has to say about NS in Singapore, even after months of living here, I'm not surprised he never had deep conversations with any Singaporeans.

Pro tip, Dover: there are better ways to investigate peoples' heritage than walking around asking people about their heritage. And if you do ask, and the answer you get is "what heritage?" and a laugh? Well, that may not mean what you think it means.

There's a lot happening in Singapore. It's an evolving place, with a growing civil society, increasing activism, growing nationalism and anti-foreigner sentiment, brutal competitiveness (the Singlish word is "kiasu", which is a Hokkien term that translates as "afraid to lose"), a terrible Gini coefficient, complex underlying racial tensions, and some absurd historical hard-edged nanny-state reflexes. There are a lot of things Singapore needs, but the dynamics are complex, not ripe for banal oversimplification.

Everything I've read from folks at Mendeley misses the point of the disgust. Most people are not concerned about Mendeley going away, or about development stopping, or about new features not being added. Of course you're continuing to build the tool, at least the for the foreseeable future. Of course Mendeley will continue to be have a free version, etc. Of course Mendeley will continue to add features.

But none of that is because Elsevier has suddenly decided to support open access. It's because buying and developing Mendeley is an affordable way for Elsevier to launder its godawful reputation. All the smiling emoticons in the world don't change that.

Those <$200 USD suits made in Thailand are unlikely to be top shelf. There is a huge business in southeast asia on rapid turnaround custom suits. It's not targeting the same market as real bespoke tailoring.

I have a weakness for bespoke suits. I live in Singapore, and have gone to the same tailor for seven years. He's superb, but you can tell from working with a great tailor why even "made to measure" suits can be disappointing. When I started with this guy, I would go back for two fittings after my initial measurements, and before the suit was done. The fittings would be done with the partially constructed suit. Many details were checked and little adjustments made: asymmetry in my body, the sway in the back, where I pocket my phone, how to adjust the jacket for my wallet, and making sure the right sleeve accomodates my watch (I'm left handed). I thought it was overkill. But worn, his suits are flawless and so comfortable the idea that a suit would be uncomfortable is a distant concept.

After the first few years we reduced it by one fitting.