A Dashboard Widget for Pandora.com: You've Got It Already.

I love Pandora.com. I’ve found and purchased great music that I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

Until recently I was not a fan of Dashboard in Mac OS X Leopard. I thought the widgets were mostly useless. Until recently, I just had a couple of widgets installed: a couple of clocks displaying different timezones, a monthly calendar, and a weather widget.

My opinion about Dashboard changed when I found World Radio Widget. It keeps track of the various radio station feeds I’m fond of. WRW best exemplifies what I think a Widget should do: it provides the info when you need it and gets out of your way.

I love Pandora, but I don’t like keeping an open tab or browser window open for Pandora.com. I was using Pandora Man, which is a really good program, but now that I’m using WRW, I wanted a Dashboard widget for Pandora.

I searched Google and didn’t find a widget, but I did learn about WebClip in Leopard. You click the web-clip button in the Safari Browser and crop the webpage and presto, Dashboard puts the part of the webpage you select in a Dashboard window. It’s quick, easy, and works flawlessly.

It was so satisfying that I decided to blog about it. How’s that for satisfied?

Do not try to blog when moving.

We moved back to Chicago after nearly two years in Brussels and we had both computers die on us. We’re finally back to some semblance of normalcy (enough to try to download my e-mail for the last four months).

I’ve been thinking about the direction I should take this blog (and even thinking of doing away with it).

We’ll see what I feel like in a few days. There’s been a lot of big changes in the past year and my interest in telling the whole world what’s going on in my life is waning.

Maybe I’ll post lol pictures of monkey.

Putting the Office in Officemonkey

Sometimes an office-related post slips through…

I use a variation of the Noguchi Filing System. I’ve been using it at work for the last two years.

I keep all of my active files in a single file drawer. This is the system:

Filing

Easy filing is the key to a good system. If you don’t file, you don’t have a system. Fortunately, it doesn’t get much faster than this:

When I make a new file, I ask “What is it?”. It works like this:

• What is it? “Car Insurance Policy”
• Put it in a folder named “Car Insurance Policy”

See? Easy. I don’t file it under “Insurance – Car” because I don’t think that way.

Then I take a plain manilla folder, label it with a black sharpie and stick the file in the front of my file drawer.

Done. New files are labeled with the most obvious thing and put in the front of the filing cabinet. Nothing ever goes into the back.

Retrieval

Since everything goes in the front, the drawer is in roughly chronological order. Let’s say I’m looking for some notes I took at a conference in Boston last month. I open my drawer start scanning the file titles. Since the conference was a month ago, I know I can skim the files I worked on last couple of weeks. Pretty soon, I’ll find the folder “Boston Conference”. I pull out the file and get the information I need.

Refiling

Refiling is exactly like filing. Put the file in the front of the filing cabinet. Nothing ever goes into the back. The “Boston Conference” folder is now in the front.

I don’t know about you, but I have one “Travel” folder for all my work-related trips. All my travel authorizations are in there, and all my vouchers are there. If I wanted to revise the voucher for the Boston trip, I’d flip back until I found the “Travel” folder, pull it out, update the file, and refile it in the front. Nothing ever goes into the back.

Purging

File systems need to be purged regularly. Especially active files. Projects close, stuff goes out of date, assignments change. I suggest going through the system once a month.

Start at the back. Ask yourself “Pitch, Archive, or Keep”.

Pitch: Get rid of it if you don’t need it. Get rid of it if you can find it on-line. Get rid of it if somebody else’s problem now. In that case, you might want to “gift” your file onto some other sucker… er, coworker.

Archive: Can you put it into inactive storage? I keep all income tax filings, but I don’t need to keep IRS forms from 2005 in my active files. You might have important projects you don’t want to throw out, but you don’t mind going down to the basement to find them. Get them out of your system. The Noguchi system calls these types of files “Holy files” in some sort of Shinto-inspired office-kami mysticalism; I just call them archives.

Keep: It’s okay to keep it. Even if you use it rarely. I have a file of “Management Directives” that gets updated and reviewed occasionally. When I need to refer to it, I figure it’s in the back half (unless I recall touching it recently).

You might also find duplicate folders. That’s not a big deal when you’re going through your files monthly. You might have two “Phone Bill” folders. Use this time to marry them and put the combined folder in the front. Nothing ever goes into the back.

Keep the drawer no more than 3/4-ths full. If you can’t file new things, the system breaks down.

Always keep a supply of fresh (or recycled) folders nearby. If you can’t file new things, the system breaks down.

Implications

Eventually, the front is full of stuff you use all the time and the back is full of stuff you never use. Everything in the middle is in roughly chronological order.

Retrieval is faster because the file you often use is easy to find. The file you rarely use takes longer to find, but that’s okay, because you rarely use it.

The key folders I use all the time are usually within the first few inches of the cabinet.

This is one system where special folders are useful. My “Upcoming Travel” stays in a black nylon zippered folio. It’s immediately visible when I open the drawer and I just grab it and go when I travel. I use a clear blue sheet protector to hold all the “Phone Lists” I have. It seldom gets out of the first inch of the file drawer.

I do the same thing with my closet. Laundered clothes go in the left hand side. The stuff on the the right I never wear. That stuff gets thrown out when the closet gets full.

Why the Blogging??

I’ve never been much of a regular blogger. I’m not obsessed about a topic like John Gruber or Merlin Mann and I’m not a shameless self-promoter like Cory Doctorow. I don’t feel a need to write like Wil Wheaton, and I don’t have entertaining opinions like “Manolo loves the Shoes”.

The things I’m obsessed about are (in no particular order) are: my family, jazz music, hobby programming, and public safety’s role in preparing for and responding to disasters. I can count on one finger the number of people with the same interests.

Yet still I have this website.

So why the uptick in blogging? It’s simple really, I’ve changed my “homepage” to the blog entry form, and I’ve decided I’m going to post something every day.

It’s not going to be long, it probably won’t be relevant, but I decided (for other reasons) that I need to get in the habit of writing, and the best practice for writing is writing.

GPS: Gender Problem Solved

The two or three readers of Officemonkey.org may be surprised to know that street signs in Europe are bad. I mean really bad.

The signs are not placed on poles at the street corner. Instead they’re attached to the one of the buildings on the corner, usually 20 feet high.

The first several months we were in Europe, I would use Mappy.be, No sense linking to it, because it sucks. Later I would use Maps.google.com, which was slightly better. The main problem with both sites are the directions that would say:

1. Slight left on McGubbin Street.
2. Continue on 200 m to Marie-Anne Street.
3. Continue on 50 m to Marie-Anne Blvd.
4. Continue on 1400 m to Ambrosia Ave.
5. Slight right onto Ambrosia Court.

When all you’re doing is driving down a street. Unless you had a navigator with a rubber neck, you wouldn’t be able to keep up. My wife is many things, but she does not have a rubber neck. And when I navigate, I communicate poorly (i.e.: I say “turn left” when I mean to say “turn right”).

After a particularly harrowing trip to our friend John’s house (we were an hour late, thanks to a poorly marked detour). Sandy said (jokingly, I assure you) “Let’s get a Tom-Tom and save our marriage”.

Enter the ONE.

GPS gadgets appeal to women as well as men because they solve that age old problem of “stopping to ask for directions”. If only all problems could be solved as simply and satisfyingly.

The Thrill is Gone

I’ve been living in Brussels almost two years now and I can officially say: I’m used to it.

Last night we were driving on the “Ring” in Antwerp and I looked out over the mostly industrial and vaguely gloomy area where Merksem meets Sint-Amandus and I realized that it looked exactly like Milwaukee along the North Shore Freeway.

My Blue Heaven

On 29 April 2008 at 0515 CEST, our son was born. He weighs 3.160 kg and was 52 cm long (that’s 7 lbs and 20.5 inches).

My dear wife was so amazing. She claims she’s a klutz and physically unaware, but she she had a problem-free pregnancy and delivered our child beautifully.

The doctors and hospital staff that attended us are all wonderful. They made the language barrier disappear.

Now, about our son. He has my feet and his mother’s legs. He has his great-grandma’s chin, his grandfather’s ears, and his other grandfather’s forehead.

Like his father and his mother, he shares a birthday with another jazz giant. He will no doubt be the “Duc du Lac” when we stroll the pond around with his “big sister”, la Reine du Lac.

Looking Back

I’ve been gone a long time. I’m not sure how to get back into the swing of things.

I suppose I just start again.

It’s been a very exciting time at Officemonkey Central. Living in Brussels has been very life changing. Full details (and pictures) will come once the good news happens.

The other biggest bloggable news is I watched the “Up Series”. Probably the most engrossing documentaries I’ve ever seen.

I’m roughly 7 years behind the “Uppers”. It was interesting to see where they are, and where I was at that age.

Well, that’s all for now. Hope to see you soon.

Oddest Brussels Landmark

No, it’s not the 18-inch statue of a naked toddler peeing.

No, it’s not the giant silver tinkertoy.

These are the famous Brussels landmarks. I’m talking the oddest landmark.

Americans who have visited Brussels for any length of time will know what I mean.

You take the metro to De Brouckère and you go up the stairs and it stands before you in all its glory.

One of the few remaining Chi-Chi’s restaurants.

Apparently, the Chi-Chi’s chain fell on hard times in 2004: a Hepatitis A outbreak in one of their restaurants caused them to sell their operations to Outback Steakhouse which shuttered the American restaurants.

The Chi-Chi’s is located in a 70s era, butt-ugly office building. The plaza in front of the building is walled off with high, ugly, iron fencing. Three flag poles, flying Chi-Chi’s flags, stand in the center of the plaza. Put a couple of armed guards in front and the whole thing would look like an Embassy.

The Chi-Chi’s Embassy. That’s the oddest Brussels landmark.

A Short List of Things that Must Exist, Yet are Never Seen:

1. Baby pigeons.