Alex's Weblog

Sunday, January 23, 2011

The Pirates of the Caribbean - Jarrod Radnich

Very nice video shooting skills for piano performance. Didn't know that you can play piano with your butt (see the very end) :P

Sunday, January 16, 2011

直到世界的盡頭 (Till the End of the World) - WANDS

Have been listening to this song a lot these few days... A really touching episode of Slam Dunk.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

The chart of Getting Things Done

The image below is a very good illustration of the GTD process that I have been following for a long time to get things done. It's from the December 2008 issue of the Costco Connection:

If I am to improve upon the process, there are two modifications I would make:

Before eliminating a non-actionable item, you should find out how it goes to your "IN" in the first place. If possible, remove the source of such garbage so that you won't spend time on reviewing it in the future.
If it is a big project that involves multiple steps and not important enough that you have to get on it now, one should just defer it instead of breaking it down into actionable tasks immediately. The reason is that you need time to "dive" into a big project and it is kind of a waste if you just plan it out without working on it.

My personal preference is to use Google Calendar to keep track of time sensitive actions and ActiveInbox for tasks that I should work on as soon as I can.

Do you use GTD to manage your tasks? Leave a comment if you have any thought or suggestion :)

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Schabarum Regional Park

Really love the cold colors of this picture

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Scan multiple pages as a single PDF file with A-PDF Image to PDF

Since I upgraded to a Windows 7 machine, the scan and fax software of my HP LaserJet 3055 All-In-One printer does not work anymore. People are actually quite upset about it as you can see from the following two threads:

The "official" answer from HP's website is to use the Windows Fax and Scan software that came with Windows 7. This solution, however, at least has the following issues:

I can no longer connect my HP printer to the router and use it as a network scanner because Windows Fax and Scan will not recognize it as a scanner (printing is okay)
Windows Fax and Scan does not let you save scanned document in PDF format but TIFF only
Unless you use the document feeder of the printer, you cannot scan multiple pages at one shot. Instead, you have to scan the pages one-by-one, save them as separate files and merge them together, which is a big hassle.

I exchanged a few emails with HP support but they would not help me as the warranty of my printer has already expired. Guess what, when it is time for me to get a new printer, I will definitely not buy from HP.

The Microsoft Office Document Imaging software that comes with Microsoft Office can actually scan multiple pages in one shot but then I discovered that it is deprecated (no longer available) in Office 2010!

So, I tried to look for a third-party solution and found a software named A-PDF Image to PDF. I downloaded its trial version and finally I can scan multiple pages manually without the feeder as a single PDF file. It is not free (the trial version will put a watermark at the upper left corner on the first page) but it has a better interface and a lot more features than the HP scan software that I have been using in Windows XP and Vista.

Hopefully this is useful to others who got screwed by HP's All-In-One printers :P