Category: My Tools

I find mind maps to be a fabulous way of thinking about things.

I regularly find myself in the situation where I am doing what I call a personal brainstorm. There are a huge set of ideas that are floating around about a subject, placing them all down onto a mind map and then structuring them is a very powerful way of visualising them. It often sparks new ideas, highlights things that are not really related to the subject and highlights activities or ideas that are dependent upon each other.

The tool that I use for mind mapping is Mindjet MindManger Pro.

I’ve struggled for a while to know quite how to write about this subject. It’s one of those where you either stay shallow or you dive in deep, and I’m not sure I see the real value in one and I don’t have time for the other. I’ve decided just to start and see where I get to.

I nearly always use mind maps for structuring thought. I have tried to present mind maps for people to talk around, it normally results in lots of vacant looks. I’ve, therefore, moved away from presenting mind maps other than the simplest of diagrams (You can now do really simple diagrams in PowerPoint 2007).

As a thought structuring technique I nearly always start with a blank sheet and type.

Mind Manager allows you to do a lot of the working from the keyboard so it’s relatively easy to stream-type. In this mode the two most powerful keys that you have available are the “Enter” key and the “Insert” key.

• Pressing “Enter” adds a topic at the same level as the one you are currently in. This is great for creating a list of things all at the same level.
• Pressing the “Insert” key adds a topic as a child of your current topic. Great for adding a sub-thought.

I don’t classify, mark, annotate, or even worry too much about the structure it’s just how the thoughts come out. It’s amazing, though, how often that these thoughts are reasonably well structured. If you stop to think too much about the structure you loose the flow a bit.

Ideas tend to come faster than I can type so type as much as possible to make sure that I don’t miss something.

After I’ve brainstormed I’ll then structure and annotate. Mind Manager has a great set of Map Markers. I normally expand these out so they are all visible on the right of the screen. From here I’ll pick topics and mark them. My favourites are priorities, because that’s often what I am trying to get to understand.

The one thing I’ve always thought would be useful, but never been able to work out, is the ability to filter a set of topics based on the markers. Perhaps I just haven’t looked hard enough.

Once I’ve been through this activity I normally go and create something that communicates the thoughts that I have just worked out. I’d like people to be able to just look at my maps and understand them, but that doesn’t seem to communicate very well. Perhaps it’s a culture thing.

I’m actually quite a simple Mind Manager user, and lots of people do far more explicit things, this way of working helps me though.

Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time will know that I’m a bit of a numbers freak. I used to think that everyone was like me, but I’m steadily realising that not everyone approaches graphs and charts with quite the same level of enthusiasm.

If you are a numbers person – read on. If you think numbers are as interesting as a postman’s socks you have my permission to go and read something more appropriate to your needs.

For a numbers man link me Google Analytics is heaven. I can tell you more information than you could possibly want to know, or could be bothered to ask about.

I can tell you where people came from, where they went to, what browser they were using, where there device is situated, what search keywords they used, and so much more.

Probably the best bit about Analytics is that you get all of this information for the princely sum of £0. Now there’s a bargain.

For those of you not aware of analytics it works like this:

• You register for an account at analytics.google.com.
• You then add a website profile.
• It then generates some code which you put in a sensible place on your site. In the case of this site typepad even have a widget to make it that much easier, and I know that wordpress allows the same.
• Then you wait a while, preferably 24 hours.

Bit by bit, the numbers start rolling in and you can enter numbers heaven.

I have a number of favourite views.

The first thing I normally notice is the Traffic Source view. In recent times there has been a shift here. Google used to absolutely dominate these numbers, they are still big, but they are down to 30%. The difference has been twitter and a myriad of other referers who have said something about one of my posts on their blog (thanks).

Having said that, I still have a good look through the search keywords. Should I be worried that the top two keywords are “graham chastney blog” and “graham chastney”, are people really trying to find me.

As a technologist I’m also interested in things like the browsers that people use – Internet Explorer is still out in front, but Firefox is catching fast.

I’m also really interested in the location of my visitors. Being based in the UK and would expect many visitors from there, the number of visitors from the USA is nearly as big. Being able to drill down beyond country is fun, but it’s not really that useful for my blog.

A blog is really about the content though, and that’s where I get the best information, what are people reading? The simple answer to that is – all sorts of stuff. There have been a few really popular ones, but the reading is very varied, which I suppose reflects the variance in my writing.

You can also decide to share your analytics with other Google users if you so desire. I don’t, primarily because it’s a person blog and I’m not sure else would care about my statistics.

Analytics is so good that I regularly ask myself the question – “why can’t I have this at work?”

Part of my daily routine is to “free journal”. After my morning walk I sit down for a time of quiet with an A4 Ruled notebook and a pen and I write.

I call it free journaling because I write whatever comes into my head. There are many different types of journaling, I’ve tried a few, but keep coming back to simply streaming out my thoughts.

It’s surprising how often my thoughts come streaming out, thoughts on work, thoughts on the family, personal thoughts, thoughts on faith and grace.

One of the things that writing does is to get things out of my head. I can let things swirl around and around, once they are written down they stand still. It’s much easier to look at something that is standing still.

That’s about all I’m going to say about the reason why I journal, there are many people who have written far better explanations on the benefits than I could. This post is about the tools that I use to journal.

I’ve tried technology solutions for journaling but they all fail, not because of the technology, because of me.

With a notebook and pen there is nothing else, I sit on a sofa away from a keyboard so there are no distractions. When I write, I’m not worrying whether it’s legible, spelled correctly or whether it is good grammar, I’m just writing. When I use a keyboard my brain won’t allow me to be free, it wants me to be correct. While I’m trying to be correct I can’t stream, it’s disruptive.

I’ve tried to use a PC Tablet as a pseudo notebook, but still there is a deep felt need to be correct.

Some days I will only write a few lines, other days I will write a full page of thoughts. This used to trouble me, I measured the value of the journal by it’s length. One of the ways I would overcome this fear was to write in an A5 sides notebook so I have a few of them too. I’m more laid back about it now so the A4 notebook does just fine.

There’s more to it than that though.

A notebook and pen are tactile things. When I’m sitting in that place with those object my brain knows what is coming, I’ve build a routine and the routine helps. When I first started it took me ages to get into a stream, if I follow the routine the stream now comes quite easily.

When I have finished one notebook it goes on a bookshelf next to my other notebooks, there is something very satisfying about seeing the number of books increase. Seeing files feel a computer disk doesn’t feel the same.

If you are interested in journaling D*I*Y Planner has a good introduction.

Having failed to publish a summary in May I thought I would get in slightly early for June:

One of the things that I quite often want to do is to show people a snapshot of what I see on my screen. That’s where Jing come in.

Jing does stills and movies and it does both of them in a wonderfully simple elegant way.

Jing appears on the screen as a small yellow/orange half-sphere. When you move over it you get to see three options:

Once you have selected “Capture” you then select the area which Jing automatically helps with by selecting the active window. You don’t have to use this window, but it’s surprising how often that this is exactly what you want to do.

The next thing to choose is what type of capture you want to do. If you select “Image” then you are prompted as to where you want to put it, if you select “Movie” then you are given a count down of 3-2-1 and then you record the movie.

Once captured you then decide what you are going to do with your capture. Again there are some nice features here, including the ability to send directly to Flickr and to screencast.com. The things that I am capturing are normally going into presentations for my work so I normally save them to a file.

Movies are in created in shockwave making them easy to transport and to publish.

I had forgotten how much easier Jing makes this process until I came to write this post. One of the challenges with showing snapshots of a snapshot tool is that you struggle to use the snapshot tool to do it. Going back to alt-prt scr was a real step back in history for me.

Synergy does a really simple thing, but it does it really well – it allows two PC to share the same mouse and keyboard.

When I am working from home I stand my work laptop alongside my home PC so that the monitors line up. I then start Synergy as a server on my home PC, and start it as a client on my work laptop.

Synergy then allow me to use the two systems sat next to each seamlessly switching between them by moving the mouse from one to the other.

Doing this I get all of the advantages of having multiple displays, I also get to use all of my processing power and I don’t have to worry about which applications I have available on the machine that I happen to be using, because I’m using both of them. I’m running Windows XP on one of the systems and Windows Vista on the other, so I also retain access to two different operating systems, and as it happen, two different versions of Microsoft Office too.

There are a couple of disadvantages. Because the Synergy is relying upon a network you can sometimes get glitches caused by network latency. Having said that, I’m running across a 802.11g LAN and the glitches are rare. The other disadvantage is that the system relies on some processing, so if the processor is flat out you can get problems. If you have UAC started on Vista Synergy can’t intercept the UAC Shell, but that would be expected, the nice thing about Synergy is that it doesn’t stop you using the real keyboard. These are minor issues though.

Synergy is free, open source and hasn’t changed since 2006, and still works with Vista. There’s a reasonably active patch community, but I’ve not needed to install any of the, sometimes software that works is best left alone.

One of the pieces of technology that quickly and easily became integral to my day-to-day work was my iPod.. Prior to getting my iPod I used a number of other media players; everything from a cheap MP3 player to the media player on my Windows Mobile phone. The integrated iTunes + iPod experience provides a significantly different experience.

The main benefits for me come in the podcast experience where it’s the simple things that count:

• Simple selection and synchronisation with iTunes
• Remembering the last playing position
• Having podcasts listed in a specific menu structure
• Good handling of previously played items including synchronisation back to iTunes.

I don’t just use it for podcasts though, there is a lot of music on there too classical, rock, jazz, instrumental.

It really becomes a significant tool in a number of scenarios. Here are some examples:

• Technology information – I subscribe to a number of different technology podcasts. These are a reasonable way of keeping my technology knowledge current. It’s not my primary way, which is RSS, but the change of medium does give me different insights.
• Quiet space – when I am wanting to focus on something I find that quiet classical music is a great way of removing a lot of distractions. I have a couple of playlists set up.
• Contemplation and meditation – I try to make meditation a part of every day. There are a couple of podcasts that are produced specifically to help in this process. They provide a great way of slowing down.
• Gym – Listening to upbeat music makes a difference to my work rate in the gym. I’ll also use this time as a time to consume more podcasts.

My next investment is likely to a kit for the car to extend my access to podcasts primarily.

I tend not to use iTunes that much for playing tracks, when I am working from home I’ll use last.fm to provide tracks – primarily classical.

The update process for iTunes is still a pain in the rear.

Every one of the blog services provides an adequate online post creation capability – but I prefer to use an application on my PC. I’ve tried the online capabilities, they are adequate, but there is something about them that impacts upon my creativity. I don’t really know what it is, perhaps it’s just the way I have been wired after years of using client based applications, perhaps it’s something more fundamental than that. I’m not a trained psychologist or a creativity expert so it’s just a perception.

My current preferred client application is Windows Live Writer. I’ve been using WLW all the way through the various beta iterations and onto the current 2008 version.

It’s interesting to go back to a very simple editor after years of using more complex ones with lots of formatting capabilities. Having the format constrained actually helps my writing, the fact that there is really nothing to fiddle with helps me focus on the words. It’s not dissimilar to the effect of the clean interface of outlining in Word.

There are lots of plug-ins available, but I only really use one of them and that’s Flickr4Writer. Flickr4Writer, as it’s name suggests, allows the easy insertion of Flickr pictures. I have tags set up on my Flickr sets so that I know which pictures I’ve already used, and which ones I haven’t. It’s a process that isn’t perfect, but it works well enough.

I also try to add categories and tags to each post so I’ve set up WLW to remind me before it posts. These are both very easy to add with WLW, I keep meaning to go and look for an automatic tagging plug-in but haven’t, so it can’t be that big a deal.

Some of my most popular posts are ones about the dictionary in WLW, they still get lots of posts even though they are largely redundant, especially from a UK English point of view.