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Pomodoro-Friendly Junior-Size Planning Pages for 2012

Posted on: December 28th, 2011 by Sam Hotchkiss

I’m a huge fan of the Pomodoro Technique, and worked up these planning pages for 2012– I do 45 minute Pomodoros, up to 8 a day, so I have spaces to check off up to 8 pomodoros– if you do shorter pomodoros, you can cross-check for twice as many (cross off one diagonal for one pomodoro, a second, to make an X, for your second)

These are junior size, prepared on letter size– this is the correct size to print onto Junior sized paper in your printer, just leave the printer set up for Letter.

Without any further ado…

2012 Pomodoro Planning Pages (PDF)

I’m a dink.

Posted on: July 13th, 2011 by Sam Hotchkiss

So, Becky and I have been watching 80′s sitcoms on Netflix lately, and this word keeps coming up.  “Dink”.

I guess I was too young when the 80′s ended to fully embrace and appreciate this word, but it fully describes how I feel about myself right now.  I have always hated it when web developers have crappy sites, or incomplete sites, and especially when they put up stupid cliches like “the cobbler’s children have no shoes”.

This site has been completely barren of content for the better part of the last 8 months, because toward the end of last year, I was migrating hosts and didn’t properly backup before hitting the fateful “terminate instance” button.  Lost 50+ blog posts which were generating hundreds of hits a day, lost all of my portfolio, about pages, everything.

I found an old backup which had 20 or so of my posts, and put those back.  I’ve restored the screen shots of my portfolio, but still need to write the descriptions for each of the projects featured.  I’ve redesigned the site and got that up.  I’m going to be working on re-writing some of my more popular blog posts which were lost, and posting some new stuff.

Sorry for being a dink.

Ditch the Bacn, get the email you want.

Posted on: May 27th, 2009 by Sam Hotchkiss

Mmmm, BacnThe term ‘Bacn‘ has been around for a couple of years to refer to, according to wikipedia:

electronic messages which have been subscribed to and are therefore not unsolicited but are often unread by the recipient for a long period of time, if at all. Bacn has been described as “email you want but not right now.”[1][2]

Bacn differs from spam in that the emails are not unsolicited: the recipient has somehow signed up to receive it. Bacn is also not necessarily sent in bulk. Bacn derives its name from the idea that it is “better than spam, but not as good as a personal email”

Bacn is, generally, non-urgent, not terribly exciting, but may still be information that you want and need.

So we’ve got Spam, Bacn, and then email that actually matters– personal email from one person to another (you!).  I’ll call that chops.  So, how do you keep current on your chops without getting distracted by the spam and bacn?

At Hotchkiss Consulting we use Google Apps to manage our email,  and it does a great job of removing the Spam.  But I can’t stand when I’m in the middle of a project and I get distracted by the constant inflow of Bacn, so I decided to get rid of it!  Since Google Apps is built on the Gmail core, these instructions should work for any gmail user.  Feel free to modify to fit your needs! (more…)

New eMail-based notes manager released for free!

Posted on: April 23rd, 2009 by Sam Hotchkiss

Hello everyone… sorry for the delay since my last update, Becky and I are both working on fighting off this killer cold that’s working its way through Colorado!

Last night, I cooked up a new service to allow you to manage notes via email. It’s free, and is really aimed at mobile email users (and, in particular, Peek users). It’s really easy to use, it doesn’t require signup, and I think it’s pretty cool.

To get started, all you have to do is pick a secret email box. The harder to guess, the better, because if anyone guesses it, they can get into your notes! This can be any sort of string you want, like “dahsgdjhab1234″. Then, after this string, add “@hdev2.com”. So your note email box would be dahsgdjhab1234@hdev2.com. Don’t tell anyone what it is! Not even me! Just start sending notes to it. When you send the first note, you’ll automatically get a message back with instructions on how to use the service. Here’s what that message might say, if you’re curious:

Hi! Either you just signed up, or you want some help, right? Well, you came to the right place! First things first, you should probably write down your notes email address. This is really important, as I can’t communicate with you without it! Always send your requests to:

THE SUPER SECRET ADDRESS YOU CHOSE!

Now, if you want to store a note, just send it to that address. It’s that easy! I’ll put it into my database and keep it safe for you. If you want to do stuff with your notes, just put one of the following basic commands at either the beginning or end of the subject line of your email, and I’ll act on it!

!a – All Notes. If you use this, I will send you the title and body of all of your notes. If you are a heavy user, this could be a big email!
!l – List of Notes. If you use this command, I will send you a list of the titles all of your notes (even the ones you deleted!)
!h – HELP!!! If you use this command, I’ll send you this email again

There are some advanced commands, too. For these, you have to put the Note ID of the note you’re talking about as the first thing in the body of your email. If you don’t know the Note ID, ask for the list of notes first, and that will have the IDs of all your notes!

!s – Single Note. If you use this, I’ll just send you the note you ask for.
!d – Delete Note. If you use this, I’ll delete the note you tell me to. (Actually, I won’t really delete it, cause I think you might want it back some day, but I will make it inactive so it doesn’t clutter up your workflow!)
!r – Restore Note. If you use this command, I’ll undelete your note. (See, I knew you’d want it back!)

And that’s that!

Questions, comments? Post em below…

Remember the Milk Email Scripts

Posted on: April 12th, 2009 by Sam Hotchkiss

I know I’ve been promising these for a while, but here are the three PHP scripts that make up my PHP -> Email integration.  I’m still working on converting this to a full multi-user system.  You can see I already started with the conversion on the schedule dispatch email.  Full scripts after the jump!

(more…)

Another successful site launch!

Posted on: April 12th, 2009 by Sam Hotchkiss

SureShotPhoto.netThis weekend, we launched Becky’s new photo blog, http://sureshotphoto.net/.  This was a quick launch, and Becky hasn’t started posting yet, but we got the gorgeous slideshow of her photos going, and man oh man, does it look good.

The WordPress theme is from http://graphpaperpress.com/.  We are big, big fans of WordPress for a lot of simple to moderately complex sites (like this one you’re on right now).  WordPress allows a lot of flexibility and customizability, and a well developed CMS backend.

What are the upsides of developing with WordPress?

  1. Quick development.  With WordPress you’re building your site on top of a solid base that takes care of a lot of the basic stuff, which means less testing is necessary, and less new code is necessary.
  2. Less expensive.  This ties into number 1– as it takes less time for us to develop your site on top of WordPress, you pay less.
  3. Easily extensible.  Because WordPress has such a large user base, there are thousands of extensions available.

(more…)

What I work on

Posted on: April 3rd, 2009 by Sam Hotchkiss

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I’m always interested in what setups other people use, so I thought I’d give you guys a peek at how I work…

MacBook Air

As a developer, I’m pretty demanding when it comes to my computers.  I type hard and fast, I run a ton of programs simultaneously, and I work from just about everywhere.  Not just my desk or my couch or my bed, but from coffee shops, airports, the library, with clients, in cars, on trains…

For the last three years I’ve worked on a trusty 15″ MacBook Pro which had been a great machine, although with its quirks.  It made a number of trips to the repair shop, but never left me in a pinch.  Finally, this winder, I decided it was time to upgrade, and picked up a MacBook Air, with which I have been nothing but impressed.  I opted for the solid state drive, so there is no spinning drive, and this machine is sweet.  Fast, tiny, and light.  And I haven’t missed having an internal CD/DVD drive for a second!  The backlit keyboard is a major improvement over the MacBook Pro, and it’s great to type on, too.

The MacBook Air gets an A+ from me! (more…)

Building an eMail interface for Remember the Milk using PHP

Posted on: March 6th, 2009 by Sam Hotchkiss

UPDATE: Scripts are available here: http://hotchkissconsulting.net/177/remember-the-milk-email-scripts/

rtmSo, in accordance with my plan to switch client communication from phone to email, I have decided that, instead of a Cell Phone, I will carry a Peek with me.  While it has been a rocky road so far, I trust that the people at Peek have some good updates coming down the pipeline, so I’m going to stick it out for a couple months and see how I like it.

The thing about the Peek is that it’s eMail only.  And I really do mean only.  No calculator, no games, no web browser, and no calendar.  For me, that just won’t do– I am an avid fan of Remember the Milk.  I keep it in my OS X dashboard and on my desktop email screen (I use GFYD, Google For Your Domain).  Having my RTM to go is a must.

Currently, RTM offers a couple email-based options.  You can email in new tasks, you can receive a list of your tasks for the day every morning via email, and you can receive an email reminder before a task is due.  This is a good start, but there are some problems:

1) With the daily schedule emails, you can only see what’s going on that day, you can’t see your entire schedule.  This information is crucial for setting appointments.

2) Reminder emails don’t have the task name in the subject line, meaning you have to open the email to see what you’re supposed to do.

3) You can’t do anything with the tasks– no marking them completed or postponing, you have to do this from the computer.

So, I wrote my own email interface, and will go over it and include my source files so you, too, can build your own (if you’ve got some PHP know-how).  If there’s enough interest, I will build a standalone, hosted solution for everyone of every skill level. (more…)

Changes for 2009 Part 1, Communication

Posted on: January 9th, 2009 by Sam Hotchkiss

new-years-2009Happy New Year, everybody! To bring in the new year, I am making a couple of operational changes to Hotchkiss Consulting which will go into effect on February 1. These should be beneficial to everyone in the coming year!  I will be posting these separately over the coming weeks.

The first change is in communication.

This is a biggie! I know that it’s important to you to be in touch throughout the process. You expect and value quick responses to your questions and concerns. However, for me, interruptions kill my momentum when I’m working on your site.  What may be a 5 minute phone conversation can take a huge chunk of working time out, because, after that 5 minutes, it takes a while to get “back in the groove”, so to speak, of getting your site ready to launch. (more…)

Happy New Year!!!

Posted on: December 31st, 2008 by Sam Hotchkiss

new-years-2009It’s New Years Eve, and it has been a very, very long 2008.  The economy is in the drain.  We’re lodged under a solid three feet of snow here in Durango (unheard of this early in the year).  The internet is in a period of transition.  I think 2009 is going to be a year of changes.  New technologies will become common place.

Things I’m looking forward to in 2009:

  • First and foremost, getting married.  I’ll be tying the knot on June 26th, and making Becky Peterson my wife.
  • The year of the API.  More and more services will open up and allow interactions from outside sites.  This will result in a barrage of new sites providing more functionality than ever before.
  • The beginning of the end for basic desktop apps.  This will be the year that google apps and other similar services start to take off.  Are you ready to move your life to the cloud.  (Don’t forget, Hotchkiss Consulting is your source for help in saving your company thousands a year by moving to Google Apps)
  • A new president.  Although it will be difficult to get used to a president who speaks proper English, there are worse problems to have.  With this new president, I believe, we’ll see our economy turn around.

I believe that this is a great time to be a technologist, an entreprenuer, and an American.  2009 will be a great year, of this I am sure.  Hopefully, 2009 will also be the year that I start really keeping up on my blog!

Happy new year, everyone!