Tech and life

My parents are in their late 80s, thankfully still in good health, but as you might expect, a little forgetful. They live on their own and are still quite independent but I thought I should look into some sort of reminder device which would be easy for them to use. I’ve already tried a whiteboard without much success. I had already heard about the Chumby on the TWiT podcast a couple of years ago but I came across a great post Dad vs the Chumby which convinced me it was worth getting one for my parents to try. So I picked up a new Chumby One on eBay and set it up with the apps I thought they would find useful – news, clock, weather, Flickr photos, etc. I’ve had it for about a week now and am still learning about it. The Chumby is a great little wi-fi device – it’s like a small TV screen but with a personalized, simple, always-on, multimedia internet. All the apps or widgets you’ve set up on it cycle through continuously so it’s great for the elderly. No interaction necessary. Even the alarm seems fairly straightforward to set up so they should manage that too.

But I couldn’t find a good reminder app for the Chumby – something which would, for example, pop up a colour screen with a big clear reminder message and an audible alarm at the event time. So I looked around the Chumby forum and hunted through all the apps available and this is what seems to be available as reminder apps at the moment.

Send2Chumby

Just add this app to the channel you want then visit the Send2Chumby URL shown at the bottom of the widget. This URL lets me send messages and reminders from my PC to the Chumby as shown in the image at the top of this post. Doesn’t seem to be any way to delete old messages though. It saves the last 10 messages you’ve sent then starts overwriting the oldest messages. You can tap the screen to cycle through the messages. In the link I gave above, the poster did much the same thing by using Twitter to send tweet reminders from an account set up specifically for the Chumby to monitor.

Toodledo to Chumby RSS Reader

This was a tip I read on the Chumby forum. First add the Chumby RSS Reader app to the channel you want on the Chumby. Then on your PC, sign up for a free account with Toodledo if you don’t already have one and add the tasks, events, appointments and reminders there. I found it better to enable the Start Date field rather than the Due Date field so you can suppress future events/tasks. You do that under Settings, Tasks, Fields/Functions Used. Then get an RSS feed of your tasks in Toodledo by going to Tools, More, scroll down to Other Tools and Services and under RSS you can enable the RSS feed and get the feed URL. I also checked Only Publish the Hotlist.  Now tasks with a future Start-Date will be hidden from the hotlist regardless of their priority, due-date, status or star so no reminders for future start dates will appear on Chumby. Then add the URL of your RSS feed to the Chumby RSS Reader. Now all tasks, events, appointments and reminders on your hotlist in Toodledo will appear on the Chumby.

Chumby Alarm

This is the best alternative if you want an audible alarm and short message at a particular time rather than a general text reminder which the first two methods gave. The Custom alarms are easy to set up and pretty customisable but the only downside is that the reminder text doesn’t really stand out too well on the screen. You can partly get round this by using different audible alarms for different events.

Well that’s a quick look at the benefits Chumby can have for the elderly particularly as a reminder aid. If you have any thoughts or know of a better reminder setup for the Chumby, please drop a comment below. Or what do you use to help elderly parents remember things?

What we do in our spare time has changed dramatically over recent years. With the recent upsurge in social networking, we’re all spending more time on Facebook and Twitter. For many of us, social networking along with gaming means that, as well as staring at a screen at work, we are now staring at another screen in the evening and into the late hours as well. And this obsession generally spills over into the weekend when we can chill out and catch up with blogs, social networks or put in some extended gaming sessions. For some, social networking and gaming can become an unfortunate addiction, eating up precious spare time we’ll never get back.

What’s my point here? Well although we can generate great memories from online encounters, I suspect we may be better off getting out and ‘getting a life’ as they say. But I hear you make the point what’s the difference with slumping in front of the telly all evening. Not much. We’ve just switched to a different screen, albeit a more interactive experience, but I would question whether it’s the best way to generate great memories.

So what’s the big deal about memories? Well, the older we get, the more we look back, believe me. Our lives are full of milestone events that go to make fond memories – first day at school, first date and all the other firsts. Memories of our parents and friends, school days, school mates, college days, college mates, work and work mates, sporting events and sporting achievements, musical events, hobbies and pastimes. Holidays and days out with the family. Girlfriends, boyfriends, marriage, the birth of our children and the children growing up. I could go on. We’ll look back on all these events as fond memories as we get older. And it’s not just sights and sounds that make memories. Smell and taste are also important. I remember the distinctive smell of some of the shops of my childhood – particularly ironmongers, delicatessens and cafes.

My contention here is that spending time online generally isn’t making fond lasting memories. Sure, we’ll probably remember some YouTube videos and memorable games just as we fondly remember some TV programmes, but I suspect most of our gazing at screens will just be a distant blur in 20 or 30 years time. And of course if we have a young family growing up, spending too much time gaming or on Facebook to the detriment of engaging with our kids surely is getting our priorities badly wrong. Believe me they grow up all too fast and are gone before you know it leaving you wondering if you spent enough time with them in those vital years. You only get one chance at life as they say.

So get away from that screen and go out and make memories with your friends and families. Capture them digitally too and don’t forget to back them up to your external hard drive and to the cloud so at least you’ll have these to jog your fading memory in days to come.

Image credit: Buttercup Sunset by Autumnsonata

On a few occasions in the past, I’ve ended up overdrawn on my bank account because I wasn’t keeping a close track of the account balance. On each occasion, the first thing I knew about it was a letter the next day from the bank informing me that I had exceeded my authorised overdraft limit and imposing an immediate pretty hefty charge.

Well no more! From Monday last, my bank (Bank of Scotland) finally introduced SMS alerts for bank accounts. As well as being able to get regular (daily, weekly) SMS updates on my account balance, I’ve set a lower limit at which I want to receive a text alert so I have time to move funds from my savings account to top it up and prevent it from going overdrawn.

A little late, but finally here, this is an excellent tech advance by my bank and I won’t be caught going overdrawn again without my knowledge. If I go overdrawn now it’ll be my fault. In this tech age, banks making money through charges because you have not been kept informed is just not acceptable.

Has your bank introduced low balance text alerts? Check their website to see if they have. If not, find out when they propose to introduce this. If they have no plans, consider moving to a bank that does. Okay so you’ve had this facility with your bank for some time. Let us know how long so I can see just how long my bank has been dragging its feet on this one.

Here’s a few grocery shopping tips I find useful and you might too.

Hard sell. Dealing with unripe fruit, e.g. kiwis

Usually when I buy packs of say kiwi fruit in the supermarket, they are hard to the touch and pretty sour to eat. I find it’s best to put them away in a dark cupboard for 4 or 5 days to ripen until they become slightly soft to touch. The best routine I’ve found is to get into the habit of buying your next (unripe) 6-pack of kiwis just when you start on your ripened pack. This way, if you eat one kiwi a day, your next pack should be ripened when you finish that pack.

Look up… or down. Watch the eye-level pricing

You’d almost need a calculator these days to work out the best deals in stores. I’ve found that supermarkets here tend to put the higher priced brands at eye-level. Look to the higher or lower shelves for better priced great alternatives. For example, I was shopping for tartare sauce recently. Our local supermarket stocks a bewildering variety from real cheap to premium brands. There were better prices two shelves down from the eye level premium brands.

Closed shop. Watching store opening times

Evening and late night opening times can be a little confusing and hard to remember. There’s nothing worse than getting to a store to find it’s closed for the night. You can usually check opening times online beforehand, but in the UK, the Opening Times website will keep you right. It lists businesses by location or post code. If your store isn’t listed, you can add the opening details yourself or update them if they’re incorrect. Check if you have a similar website in your part of the world with a Google query like opening times ‘your town’ or opening times ‘your country’. Here’s another idea. To make a quick note of opening times at the store, use your smartphone to take a photo of the board of opening times at the entrance, then transfer it to say Evernote so you always have access to it on your phone.

Fruit crush. Don’t crush your delicates

At the store checkout, when you’re loading your goodies onto the checkout belt, place the heavier, or robust items (tins, milk drums, etc) on first and leave the lighter items and delicates (fruit, eggs, cakes, etc) till last. That way, the robust heavy, stuff goes through first and you can pack this at the bottom of your bags and lay the delicates on top so they’re not crushed.

Dead flat. Recycle your old batteries

At the checkout, our local Lidl store has a box where you can deposit your old batteries for recycling. Much better for the environment than chucking them in your refuse bin. Check out if your local stores have this facility. If not, ask them why not.

Got any great shopping tips? Drop a comment below.

As you get older, seems you need to carry around more and more stuff – glasses, tissues… I don’t like shoving everything into my pockets so I got an Outdoor Gear bag a couple of years ago and find it’s pretty useful for carrying around stuff I might need. It’s light and not too bulky and I can just grab it on my way out of the house without having to hunt around and probably forget something.

So what’s in my bag? Well here’s a list of the things I find useful to take with me:

Canon digital camera – I hated having to remember to take my camera and now I know I’ll always have it. Yes, I know there’s one on my phone but unfortunately it broke.

Two spare charged AA batteries – always handy for the camera or some gadget.

Glasses – I only need specs for reading, so I carry a pair of cheap (2x) magnifying glasses in my bag. I also carry a thin, credit card sized magnifier in my wallet.

Sunglasses

Pen and notepad – although I can also make notes on my phone, it’s always handy to have a pen.

Earbuds – a spare set

Pack of tissues

Fold-up plastic fork – in case I have to eat out!

Coins – always useful to have some emergency spare change, for example, for parking meters and shopping trolleys.

Toothpicks

4GB USB drive with my portable apps

Elastoplasts, Band-Aids, Dressings, whatever you call them

Swiss Army penknife, and tweezers in the side pockets.

Mints

So if you carry a bag, what do you find useful to have with you?  Oh, and if you want more ideas, have a look at Everyday Carry.

I’ve struggled along with free satellite channels on my old tube TV for a few years now and it’s time for a change. There’s less and less that interests me on TV these days and the thought of streaming internet TV on my PC in my home office doesn’t thrill me… after spending the day working there already.

So it’s time to part with some hard earned cash and bring the web and streaming media to my couch and telly. I hope to have it all in place by the end of the summer. I’ve read a number of posts and bookmarked lots of pages and I’m looking to buy the following:

Flat screen TV

I can’t stream to my old CRT TV – it has an S-video connector and doesn’t have digital inputs like HDMI so I need a 32” (that’s big enough for me) flat screen that takes HDMI input.

Set-top box

I was originally thinking along the lines of a PS3 but more recently a positive assessment of Boxee software on a podcast by Knightwise got me interested in Boxee.  So perhaps I should go for a  Boxee Box to get internet and my media to the TV, but a recent reader recommendations post on Lifehacker on set-top boxes saw the Boxee Box way down in popularity behind a home theater PC, Roku, Apple TV, etc.

Router

I should get a wireless N router to replace my G-router while I’m at it.

NAS

I’ll need a 1 TB NAS to store my downloaded movies and other media (and backup my data from my PC) and I’ll stream from this to my TV or set-top box.

Are you streaming media to your TV? I’d love to hear your recommendations on TVs, set-top boxes, routers and NAS. What’s your set-up? Would you do anything different if you started again? Has any piece of hardware been a nightmare to work with? What are your tips and things to watch out for? As I build the set-up I’ll post about it… but it’s your turn to have your say first.

We live in a 24/7 society. Emails demand to be answered straightaway if not sooner, even on the weekend.

I’m a freelance editor and received an email from a new client in China on Saturday afternoon asking if I could undertake and return work in 3 days. I’m already fully booked for the week ahead so I just responded that I couldn’t meet that deadline but that I’d be happy to quote again in future when the deadline wasn’t so tight. I then received a further, wait for it, 4 replies over Saturday and Sunday, starting with ‘How much time will it take you, please?’ and culminating with ‘May I have your answer?’ After that final one on Sunday afternoon, I responded that I was fully booked until the 14th April. I concluded the email with ‘I could edit your paper after that, but judging from your emails I think you want it back much quicker. I’m sorry I can’t help on this occasion.’ I’m awaiting a reply on that one.

The exchange brings up two points:

Just how urgent are work deadlines?

The client started by asking for a 3 day turnaround but his follow-up email indicated he might compromise a little. However, the number of emails I received from him over the weekend suggested that he really wanted the work done pretty urgently. I suspected from my end that a 1 week turnaround would be reasonable and I just couldn’t believe his deadlines were that inflexible. I really couldn’t fit his work in that week as I was fully booked and surely he couldn’t expect me to bump other clients down to fit him in.

What’s with all this weekend work emails?

I don’t know how things are done in China but mostly around here, people take some time off at the weekend to, for example, spend some time with the family. Is that unreasonable? If I’m not responding to your email, surely you can wait till Monday? Or have we reached the stage where an email response is required within a few hours, even on the weekend?

How do you treat weekend work emails? Do you keep checking your work emails over the weekend and respond within an hour or two or do you wait till Monday? Do you find some clients have unreasonable deadlines and like to push for completion when really there is no obvious urgency. I’d love to hear your comments.

Update: On Monday morning after that weekend, I had an email from the client asking me to go ahead on my timescale. He had been able to extend his deadline from the publisher and so my turnaround time was fine. So as I suspected, there was some flexibility there after all.

Just a quick thought on political power and its abuse today. I don’t think many would dispute the view that political leaders cling on to power once they get it and, left unchecked, will usually long outstay their welcome. We’ve seen this recently in Tunisia and at present in Egypt as the former presidents finally get the message that they must move aside in favour of democratic reform. Many other countries, including for example Zimbabwe, are suffering under the dictats of leaders who just won’t let go of the levers of power. And democracies aren’t immune to this either. Certainly here in the UK we’ve had our share of leaders who have clung on to power for too long.

That’s why I’d like to see fledgling democracies and those advocating democratic reform to adopt fixed terms for their political leaders. I’m not a great lover of the US political system but I do think their policy of a maximum 2 terms of office for the President is a very sensible idea. Lets face it, if a leader can’t put in place his policies and define his legacy after 8 to 10 years then perhaps he should be stepping aside anyway.  No one is indispensible.

So if anyone from Egypt is reading this or indeed anyone who may be involved in a future fledgling democracy or campaigning for democratic reform, think very carefully about how long you want your leader to serve, and make quite sure that a fail-safe mechanism  is in place so they step down when the time comes.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Drop a comment below.

I’m as guilty as anyone. It’s real easy to get into a routine in our daily lives. I work from home and in my case, every work morning is much the same for the first couple of hours. Shaving and washing, pretty much the same breakfast every day, check and answer emails, check RSS feeds…Not much variation in lunch routine. And so on through a routine kind of work day, shopping at the same store, etc. Routines can be detrimental. I guess you know you’re in a routine when you look back on the week and each day melds into the next with no real distinction or memorable events. So how can we get out of this dreadful routine thing and keep things interesting and fresh? I guess with the New Year coming up, this is a great time to start afresh and spice things up a bit, the objective being to make each day, week and year a bit more memorable.

Work

If you’re in a 9 to 5 set up working for someone else, then there may be little you can do in the work day to freshen it up. If work is reduced to a routine, innovative breakthroughs become rare. If your job is real drudgery, consider changing. Think about earning a living online. We really are lucky these days having the option to run our own businesses online. Pluck up the courage and give it a go. Selling, blogging, web design, whatever you feel you’d enjoy doing. You’ll have more flexibility to change your daily routine if you do.

I’m self employed and work from home. I do try and get out for a walk each day to give myself some time away from the PC to think or listen to podcasts. But I’ve been working in publishing for quite a while now and I’m looking to try some new challenge. When I look back on 2010, I can’t see much memorable to distinguish it from the year before (work and leisure time) and that’s a tell-tale sign that I’m stuck in a major rut. For me I’m considering trying something new – or at least expanding into something that I’ve already dabbled it – web design. I’m looking forward to this new challenge although I’m new to this and it may be a challenge too far pretty much from a standing start. Certainly judging by this excellent post on Nettuts+ recently. Still, in your 50s, you do tend to focus on the fact that you may only have say 15 years left to learn and master something new at work.

Leisure

There’s a bunch of things you can do here to cut the routine and make spare time memorable. It may also make us a little fitter and help the creative juices.

1. Try a new hobby. What about photography, blogging or cookery? If you have a young family, get some photos of them. Have a go at photo editing and see if you enjoy that.

2. Try evening classes to pick up a new skill, e.g. first aid, photography.

3. Get out more. Climb a hill, see a sunset and photograph it. Get out to the movies, the gym, meet up with your friends at the coffee shop or go out for a meal. If you’re out walking, you can listen to podcasts at the same time. You probably won’t create awesome memories sitting at your PC updating your Twitter or Facebook status. Do you neglect your friends in favour of a monitor? Aim to get to the end of 2011 and have some great memories to look back on.

4. If you are staying in in front of the TV in the evening, think how you could change that routine. Streaming the internet to your TV is a great new possibility to make some changes. Swap your radio listening for podcasts. I hate the old fashioned notion of radio forcing listening choices on you. Make your own choices with podcasts. Listen to what you want to hear when you want.

5. Try and get away on a memorable holiday. I know it’s difficult in these times but a holiday really will give you great memories.

6. Here’s another 50 ideas to break a routine life. The old adages ‘you’ll never get today back again’ and ‘you only get one shot at life’ ring true, certainly as you get older. Much better to think in terms of ‘so much to do, so little time’.

What can you do differently tomorrow, next week, or next year to break away from your normal routines and make life more memorable, interesting and fresh? Drop a comment below.

After my last post on Composing an effective blog post title, you’re probably scratching your head wondering what on earth this post is going to be about. Well, it’s just a trip into fantasyland. I’ve wanted to get this one off my chest for a while so here goes. If it’s not quite your cup of tea, please have a look at the recent posts listed in the right column instead.
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