Well, this is a bit of a treat: a web application that will take your uploaded photograph and contact information, and then produce a beautiful PDF suitable for wrapping your Hipster PDA. Great job, Ryan!
4 comments August 30th, 2005
Note: This is probably the one and only cross-posting I’ll ever do with a million monkeys typing and DIYPlanner.com. It might help to clear up a little bit of confusion as to the focus of the new site, which is due to launch on Saturday morning.
About two months ago, I was sitting in a Tim Horton’s (as many Canadians are wont to do), sipping on an extra-large double-double and pouring through my Day Runner. I was processing my Inbox, correlating my notes, jotting down ideas for this site, making little sketches for layout, and generally chilling out to the rhythm of the air conditioner above my head mingled with some half-remembered tune. Three tables away, a 20-something was tapping away at his Sony Vaio, and every now and then, he would stop and stare ruefully at the laptop’s screen, as if he were pondering where next to nudge the direction of world affairs. During one of these pauses, he stopped and looked in my direction. The sight of my old-fashioned planner seemed to evoke something akin to haughtiness in his cocked eyebrow, and he resumed his imperial air whilst he turned yet again to the grave matter before him.
One hour, another coffee, and a cranberry muffin later, I had a plan for this site. I now knew what I wanted it to be, I knew how I was going to approach it, I knew what sort of team I wanted, and I even had rough sketches for its design. My mind was still reeling with all manner of ideas, many coming so fast I couldn’t write them all down fast enough. The accomplishment spread through me like a warm glow, much like the day when you finally conquer your greatest fear and nothing seems impossible. I jotted down some last-minute ideas, tucked away my pen and pencil, zipped up the planner, and got up to leave.
As I walked past the Vaio user, I couldn’t help but to take a quick look over the lad’s shoulder at the screen, wondering what manner of work could so engage a person. Well, he was directing a civilisation or two, it seems. The game was Age of Empires II, if I don’t miss my guess.
Now, I’m not belittling the need to relax by playing games; I can jump into a good strategy game with the best of them. Nor do I have anything against using computers; I am not a Luddite, and I have been an IT professional for approximately half my life. But it was the look. It was the type of condescending stare that transmits a million base thoughts: he’s afraid of technology; he’s using the same antiquated things my grandfather used; he’s living in the dark ages, never to be brought into modern times.
Okay, perhaps I’m paranoid.
But the look figured into the creation of this site, you see. It helped me see that the use of paper was fast becoming a lost art.
Now, I hear you say: “But billions of people all over the world are still using paper… how can you claim it’s a lost art?”
I became “all-digital” in the late 80’s. From there on in, I attempted to use the computer for everything, including writing, time management, graphic design, communications, photography and teaching. There was nothing I did that didn’t have a digital component, it seems. Nowadays, I look around to see that my friends and family have finally been swept into this modern paradigm. Outlook is often the productivity tool of choice, and nothing is sent from one place to another unless it’s a steady stream of bits and bytes. Even to a casual observer, the implications are obvious: computerisation brings civilisation into its fold, and the more the world adopts PCs, cell phones and PDAs, the more it blots out all traditional and organic means of living and working. The use of paper is slowly being replaced by digital media, and –at first glance– it appears that those people still finding paper useful are adopting a dying art.
Or so it would seem. And so the look in the coffee shop told me. It was then I decided to expand the range of the new site. I had originally been thinking of it simply as a place to offer D*I*Y Planner kits and advice, to leave my poor little blog with something else to discuss, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that there seems to be a renaissance in the air. People are suddenly awakening to the fact that we can be just as productive with paper, if not more so. It also brings a sort of intimacy back to living, where we can hold a tangible pen, see the spread of ink, feel the texture of real paper, be linked to an art and method that go back millennia. We know the inked quill of John Dunne, the charcoal of Da Vinci, the sumi brushwork of the Japanese, and the fragile gall-iron and ochre marks upon ancient parchment. There is tradition, there is heritage at work. Yea, verily, even unto checking a Next Actions box!
That’s the rub, I thought: bring back that fading connection with paper. The site should take into account much more than just time management, although that is still important: we need to live our lives as effectively as possible in a fast-paced world. But there is no reason why we can’t think of keeping journals again, to note the quirks and happenstance of our days. Why can’t we track our dreams, collect photos and fallen leaves, expand our ideas in multi-faceted webs, create art or just doodle, flesh out our little creations with something that actually feels like life and living?
This isn’t for everyone, of course, and for those people looking for useful templates to organise their month, yes, you will continue to find such things here. But to the many of us who are looking to unleash the more creative and intimate aspects of ourselves, there is room here too. And to those who love creating forms and sharing wisdom and questions, there is a place, and also for those who come in a state of confusion to seek a dash of inspiration mixed with a draught of practical advice. The voices are many, the quality of the many volunteer writers superb, the viewpoints diverse. This is a community site, one that is built to focus upon once more regaining a lost art.
This is a long way of saying, “Welcome to DIYPlanner.com.” But now you know why we’re here.
10 comments August 30th, 2005
Update : This set, and many more, are now available free at www.DIYPlanner.com.
The most requested item on my D*I*Y Planner to-do list, even more so than the Hipster PDA Edition, has been a source file so that people can create their own templates. I’m not about to release my mass of Adobe Illustrator and InDesign files (indeed, they are guaranteed to frighten small children and reduce husky men to tears), but I’ve been hinting for a while at an OpenOffice.org template that mere mortals might use without fear of drowning in thousands of vector layers. The time has come for a preview release.
Below you’ll find an early release of my OpenOffice.org Draw template kit for creating your very own forms, called –ahem– the D*I*Y Planner Widget Kit 0.3. It requires at least 1.1.3 of OpenOffice.org (free at OpenOffice.org), a touch of patience, and a little bit of knowledge of Draw (or at least a willingness to learn it). It should work fine in OOo 1.9.x, but my Linux box is down for the count, so I can’t test it at the moment. (This kit was created with NeoOffice/J on a Mac, a Java-driven version of 1.1.x.) In the package, you’ll find the Draw SXD file, a sample PDF exported from it, and the very necessary Blue Highway fonts. Please make sure you install these first!
When you open up this file, you’ll see a page with a layout that approximates a standard 5.5×8.5 D*I*Y Planner form, and there are a number of graphical elements that you can copy and paste into your own creation. That’s all there is, really: no elite programming or technical skills required, just OOo and enough time to do what you need. My only tip for you: create a new “slide” (i.e., page), copy the whole widget slide into it, delete what you don’t want, and move around the rest, duplicating as necessary. Be sure to plan out your template first (I do mine on paper), and then start experimenting with the kit. The more you use the elements and the application, the more you’ll figure out what’s going on. Sorry, but I’m offering no support for this kit at the moment, nor am I giving any advice on using OOo — that’s what its help is for, and there are tutorials floating around the Net. So use this package at your peril. 
Now, here’s the clincher. The new DIYPlanner.com site is going to launch on this Saturday, but we’d like to let a few template designers into the hidden development site a bit early so that they can upload their templates into our directory for sharing. So if you already have templates that you’d like to share, or if you create one using this kit, please email me (the address is at the bottom of the menu at right) and I’ll let you in. Just don’t mind the wet paint and sawdust, and be sure to keep the address top secret! (There are certain things the public shouldn’t see, not yet….)
Download: D*I*Y Planner Widget Kit 0.3
This package is released under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- ShareAlike License.
5 comments August 28th, 2005
My good friend Steve Sharam, who writes a blog alongside his father called “When Reality Knocks” (that being the name of his blog, and not his father), chimes in with a hilarious piece about How to be organised. Think Dave Allen meets Dave Barry, and you get the idea:
2) Keep a pad by the phone for taking down messages, but no pen. Having a pen would allow people to take down messages, which means you would have to return calls, which just slows down your life. The pad is only for show, as other people think it makes you more organized. Almost everyone who phones you either wants to call your attention to Colonoscopy Appreciation Month or is wondering where their stinking check is. Not worth bothering about.
3) Many people have a ridiculously organized personal planner, which is fine, but you can go too far. I like to keep things fast and loose, to leave myself open to inspirational possibilities. Using this approach, you might well end up checking your bag 15 times before you leave the house to see if you have everything and then walk out the door without any pants. This is part of the reason I have so many adventures.
Apparently there’s a Part 2 coming tomorrow, and I can’t wait to read it.
Disclaimer : I’ve asked Steve to be a weekly contributor to DIYPlanner.com, and he’s agreed. I’m very lucky to have this fellow.
Update : Part II is now up, I see.
Add comment August 22nd, 2005
DIYPlanner.com is coming along extremely well, and most of the productivity stuff is falling into place there. The tentative date for launch is Saturday, September 3. More on that later.
In the meantime, I thought I’d release one last template here at a million monkeys typing. If you’re like me, you tote lots of highly personal or valuable information on you, or expensive electronics, or both. I’m always afraid of dropping my kit unnoticed, or misplacing it in a Tim Horton’s (our national coffee chain), or otherwise losing it, so I decided to spend a few minutes to whip up a “kit ID” that contains my name, address, phone number, email address and website. I put one into each planner, bag and case that I use, in the hope that some kind soul will find the lost item and return it to me.
This business-card-sized template is in OpenOffice 1.x Draw format (sxd), which will allow you to customise it to your heart’s content, to make multiples per page, to export as PDF and so on. If you don’t already have it, I highly suggest downloading and installing the free Blue Highway fonts first, which are the main ones I use on all D*I*Y Planner templates. If you don’t have them, the file will substitute another font and the layout will probably look strange. The OpenOffice.org suite, of course, is a free download.
One more tip: if you laminate the cards, they will last a lot longer and stand up to moisture (and coffee stains).
Download: property_of.zip (12 KB)
3 comments August 21st, 2005
Well, colour me impressed. After a few months of feverish activity, the Inkscape team have released version 0.42.1 of their Open Source illustration program, and it’s quite a decent piece of software. I hear you: “0.42.1, that’s like a really unfinished and buggy product, right?” Well, normally, yes. But in the Open Source world, the motto is “release early, release often” to solicit as much feedback and developer support as possible, and occasionally you’ll find something ready to use — albeit with the occasional bug or instability. The early version number usually gives you an idea of how many features (scheduled for 1.0) haven’t been implemented yet.
For a while now, I’ve been considering releasing a D*I*Y Planner kit for use within OpenOffice.org Draw 2.0. Those of you following OOo2 will no doubt remark that the final 2.0 release is pretty late (it was originally supposed to be released in March, from what I remember), and the latest beta snapshots still seem to be rather buggy to me — especially the Draw application. This is not a complaint; I’m still glad that OOo2 will exist, I’m still impressed with its features, and I’ll certainly make it my office suite of choice, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t look around for another quality drawing program to construct the kit. My criteria: 1) it should be free (so everybody can use it without paying); 2) it should be cross-platform (so everybody can use it, no matter what OS they use); and 3) it should be user-friendly enough for beginners, yet powerful enough for me to use without resorting to my minimal and rarely-used cussing vocabulary.
I’ve only had an hour of playtime, but it looks like the newer versions of Inkscape might actually fit that bill.
It’s still a little clunky, especially on OS X, and the refresh isn’t the speediest, but it’s entirely usable. While it’s no Adobe Illustrator, it certainly has some powerful features, and it’s accompanied by some great tutorials for both beginners and more advanced users. See the screenshots for a taste. Version 0.42.1 can be downloaded at the SourceForge Project Downloads page.
My only concerns:
For those interested in obtaining more SVG files (an industry standard supported by Inkscape), you can find more than 4000 pieces of vector clip art at the Open Clip Art Library, a community-developed site. Needless to say, some graphics are better than others….
3 comments August 20th, 2005
Two of the most requested forms for the D*I*Y Planner are weight and diet trackers. However, I know nothing about such things. Keeping in mind that I don’t want to tread on the toes of Weight Watchers ™ and the like, and there is a limited amount of space available on a piece of paper, does anybody have any advice about the particular data to track (e.g., fat calories, total calories, burnt calories, and so on…)?
Please leave a comment or drop me an email (see my address at the bottom of the menu at right) if have have any advice on what should be in the form. Remember: I know nothing about these things, so if you assume my complete ignorance of such matters, you’d be entirely correct!
8 comments August 20th, 2005
Well, I’m pleased to say that Drupal is living up to my expectations so far for creating a community site. It’s a difficult learning curve, but lightbulbs are going on daily. Coming up with the taxonomy (in layman’s terms, the categorisation) is probably the most challenging bit, since Drupal’s inherent power in this area tends to push administrators to do a lot more initial legwork than most other systems. My ultimate goal is to make DIYPlanner.com as simple as possible for end-users –you shouldn’t have to be a techie to use and like the system.
A few updates:
Stay tuned….
4 comments August 15th, 2005
I haven’t been able to receive any email via my Gmail account since roughly 11:30 AM Eastern time on Friday. I’ve filled out the technical report and submitted it, only to find the lovely message stating that they may not get back to me.
In the meantime, please accept my apologies for any inconvenience my non-responsiveness may have caused. I’ve set up a new address (mainly for D*I*Y Planner correspondence), which you can find at the bottom of the menu at right. Please feel free to use that one to get in touch with me.
(As you may have guessed by now, the new D*I*Y Planner domain will be www.diyplanner.com. Don’t bother going there yet, as there’s nothing to see at the moment. I’ll let you know when there is.)
Update : After three long days, email is starting to trickle in again. I suspect that there is a lot of email that I haven’t received, so please, if you have sent anything that requires my attention, send it along again. Again, sorry for the inconvenience….
8 comments August 13th, 2005
I’ve spent the past few days away from computers. While normally such a lapse in my lifestyle would leave me quaking like a twinkie junkie facing sugar withdrawal, I was more than occupied by all the family gatherings, ceremony and stress surrounding the baptism of my 13-month-old son, Conor. Somewhere in the course of events, I also came to a decision: I need to create an identity for “my other baby” too, one that will allow it to grow more freely.
The D*I*Y Planner, when I first released it, was fairly small, rather amateurish, and had no discernible future. It was simply a small pile of forms I believed I might never use again, and so I was releasing it into the wilderness to find its own way. I never would have believed that it and the subsequent –and hopefully more professional– packages would be downloaded well over 300,000 times (about 400,000, if you count the various loose forms and diagrams intended as add-ons), and that the blog would jump from two readers daily to a number that I still find intimidating. Like the proverbial tiger kitten raised in a New York apartment, it’s a beast that has now outgrown its master.
Let me explain….
Each week, I get over a hundred comments or emails about the ‘Planner and the various kits. Many are notes of thanks (which are very much appreciated, and keep me forging onwards), a few are questions that have probably been answered in the packages’ FAQs, some are general productivity-related questions, a half-dozen are clearly intended as flames or provocation (often of the “paper is for luzers” variety), a handful are wonderful suggestions (of which I cannot do without), and at least four or five include templates created by people who are eager for my feedback. While I try to answer all these emails, I’m also trying to find time to work on the version 3.0, Creativity and Education packages, juggle family commitments, and seek a permanent and stable job (not very easy in my neck of the woods). Now, this isn’t a complaint by any stretch of the imagination: I love the D*I*Y Planner work I’ve been doing, I enjoy hearing from so many imaginative and devoted users of the kits, and I see only a bright future for the project. The question I’ve been mulling these past few days, though, is this: “What’s next?”
In a way, I feel like I’ve been hoarding this project to myself for far too long. Not only has this turned a million monkeys typing into an almost obsessive productivity blog (which is far from my original intention), but it seems as though I’ve been suppressing the voices of people who should be free to share their wonderful thoughts, suggestions and templates, but yet have no real –and public– outlet to do so. I’m only one man (backed by a large, albeit fictitious, troup of monkeys) and my perspective and time are thus quite limited, but there’s an opportunity for a community, however small, to grow. And so it is with some degree of trepidation that I’m preparing to cut loose my creation once more.
Here is the current plan:
Many of the better productivity-related posts of the past will find their way into the new domain.Will this work? I don’t know, exactly, but I’m willing to give it a shot. If I can direct even a quarter of the ideas and enthusiam that reaches me privately into the more public forum, it’ll be an exciting ride.
In the meantime, if you’d like to share your templates or a proposal for an article, don’t be shy: please get in touch with me (my email address is at the bottom of the menu at right). There’s no money involved, just fame, glory, a link to your site, and the warm glow you get from helping others. Oh, and the undying adoration of thousands of paper-based-planning groupies….
7 comments August 10th, 2005
Consider this an invitation to leave comments regarding what templates you’d like to see created for the new edition of the classic/A5 D*I*Y Planner. (That can also include ideas for the Education and Creativity packs, since the work is proceeding more or less simultaneously.)
Among the tentative improvements for version 3.0 that I’m already working on:
As you can see, most of these changes are evolutionary, not revolutionary, which is why I’m soliciting as many ideas as possible to add a few more options and a bit more spice into the package. Let me know your wishlist, and I promise I’ll examine all your suggestions.
Last week, we hit 300,000 combined downloads so far of versions 1.0, 2.0 and the Hipster PDA Edition, but I’m not kidding myself: it’s only because of your help, because of community feedback, that the ‘Planner kits have been so well received and seem to be meeting the needs of so many people. I’d like that to continue, so please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas. What additions to this package would help you better manage your life, your time, your information? What would you like to see?
(Egad… I sound like a PBS pledge drive, just without the tote bag. Then again…. )
If you’d prefer not to leave a comment, you can always email me instead — my address is at the bottom of the menu at the right.
Update : I’m impressed by the enthusiasm of you folks: several dozen emails and comments in just a few hours! Keep it up! Just one little thing, though: please check to see if your suggestion isn’t already in the list above or in version 2.0 of the D*I*Y Planner, or if it can’t be easily handled by a generic template such as Checklist — I’ve gotten a number of suggestions for things that already exist. Not that I mind such requests, but you may find that your need is already fulfilled.
24 comments August 1st, 2005