My daily Gadgets and tools

Everyone is using something to get the job done, I have my choices of utilities for doing so. first and the most important of all is my trusty Samsung Galaxy S2 phone. It’s rooted with stock rom and Nova launcher. I am a bit lazy and forgetful so I need my phone and my pc to take care of most of my tasks, by automating them to do so. On my phone I use Tasker for doing so. it’s one of the best applications that I have ever purchased and love the easiness of making my routines automated by it. Tasker keeps a look on my phone physical states like headphone connected, location-based to do list with the help of Astrid  for shopping, or even application triggered reminders for paying the bills, or even ask my mom how to cook something when I call her, turning off my data when I am in home or at library.

Then comes the Astrid to do list, I was first a big fan of Wunderlist but now I have switched for Astrid in favor of automation. while Wunderlist is one of the best applications for managing your to do list, it’s mostly IOS based and doesn’t have the ability to sync with Google tasks  which is built-in in Google Calendar that I use to manage my time and meetings, deadline of projects and managing my time for my spouse. Also Astrid is persistent in reminding me to do something. If you are using IOS and OSx you can check out the Wunderkit, for project management and collaboration task management.

For my calendar I ditched my phone stock Calendar App the first day and installed Business Calendar  now for managing my schedules and meetings. It’s packing more features and widgets than other Android Calendars and I am a big fan of widgets since I am a lazy person and want to have all the information in one glance not scrolling through my application drawer and find and run the app. Time is money and if my time management application is taking my time, it’s better to be left alone.

My note taking favorite program is Evernote, because of all of the good things you already heard about and cloud syncing with my phone, so I can perform my reading, editing on the go, in the bed late night while trying to fall asleep.

I use Webclipper, Clearly, Food and Hello for other purposes. like clipping articles that I found related to my work, interesting recipes, my food experiences and remembering people ( really bad memory for recalling names or when we first met). In my arsenal of article saving I use Pocket; but there is a routine, every article that I found interesting first goes to Pocket so if I found it interesting or needed it for my research or future reference, it will be moved into Evernote.

 

We all have our own time budgets and we need to keep the tab on it or we lose precious time which could be used for doing what we love or what we should on like surfing the Facebook, looking at cat and dog pictures and lose our focus on what we really wanted to do by having our every action notification pop ups, dings and chimes. for me the first thing is to know how much time I have putted in my project so here comes the Focus Booster, a Pomodoro Technique based Adobe Air application which helps me to work on 25 minutes periods of pure focus and also Getworkdonemusic.Com which plays high tempo music from Soundcloud.  I have made a pact to myself, that no Facebook until 10 pm and no Mail Application should be opened on my laptop for more than 30 minutes in 3 hour. I hate distraction since I will lose my train of thought since for now I have so many Ideas and concerns. Another thing that I keep in mind is no sitting period for more than 40 minutes. after that I should get up walk around for about 5 minutes. My most used motto is “If it takes 10 minutes to complete it, do it; otherwise plan it“.

My software system bound me to 32 bit version of Windows 7 professional, which is customized in every detail imaginable. from the icons to scheduled tasks. as many other windows users may already know, windows does not support multiple workspace like Linux or OSX  which is where Dexpot comes into play. this programs allows me to have separate workspace on single monitor which helps me a lot. it’s not a memory hog and the transition is seamless. every workspace is dedicated to one thing. no distraction from unwanted shortcuts or programs.

my desktop is customized by the help of Fences  which makes groups for my shortcuts and can hide all of my icons with double-click on the background. we all look for information and files everyday, and I am no exception to this. while windows built-in search is good, I use Everything to find my files faster between my 5 hard drives. and believe me this little app, is what that keeps me sane other wise I would start to chew my keyboard.

for those of my friends and readers who are involved with articles and pdfs, I suggest Mendeley. it’s a tool for managing your pdfs, citations and much more. and since it’s so useful I will dedicate a full post to it in near future (hopefully by Sunday).

Beside My M100 Logitech mouse (which I barely use, since I love keyboard shortcuts) I use a Wacom Bamboo Pen Tablet as default input device. I love writing also don’t want to have unnecessary clutter by papers. this pen plus Evernote’s Ink Note are my companions for most of the day.

so while I am enjoying the music from Getworkdonemusic.com, my headset is there to make the experience enjoyable. it’s a Logitech G330  which I use it for communication, music and gaming.

these are just some of many tools that I use to get the job done, I may continue to post new articles about other ones in future.

Me against Suicide

Well I need to be honest, I was suicidal. Not joking, I reached to the point that after each party, each hanging out, each day I was getting near to the edge.

It looks like yesterday that I was banging my head against the wall, while I was drunk, and feeling f#!”ed up. loosing my sight on the life. But now, I am a healthy guy, with very low alcohol consumption in the parties and being the life of party. the key beside the help from professionals, is that I sat down and look at my life till that day. there were sure good times and bad times but they are always there. the most important thing was my own habits, my thinking habits.

when I looked at my habits and specially the habits of my daily routines I found something really crazy about myself. I was the source of my own destruction. I was filling my own strength by thinking about the things that I hated and then trying to escape from them instead of trying to face them and see they are nothing.

so after some point I started to think, what harm can happen to me that I haven’t been through before, people will always stay people – my ex messed up my life pretty good, I changed my life for her and she just dumped me- .

So the answer was in my own hand. after ward I bought my self a dslr, started to blog again, start getting serious in my academic life, and finally give my love to myself and those dear persons around me.

I guess if there is a reason to be mad at life, that is the same reason to cling to the life itself, to shook it, to tame it, to change the world with a baby toddling  approach.

now it’s your turn.