Org Web Adapter

Editing ideas.org

#+TITLE: ideas

* Short story: Gravel roads

A small New England town makes the decision to grind up all the asphalt roads and replace them with well-graded gravel roads. The impact on life is stark as people have to slow down and stay local.
Entered on [2019-01-02 Wed 10:28]

* Make and sell homemade stationary with plantable seeds in them

Using paper making kit, kids could make paper that has lupin or hollyhock seeds
in them for sale at local gift shops.
Entered on [2019-01-02 Wed 10:30]

* Small government municipal software
** Overview

Currently, Castine pays $10K per year to Harris to manage this. The software is
old and clunky and they're charging us to bring it all up to date as a modern
web app. The constraints on a gov. are surprising small and it would be possible
to build an app that could replace portions of the workflow at a time.

** Next step

Research what Harris Local Gov currently provides small towns and figure out
whether it's possible to severly undercut their $750/mo annual fee for what they provide.

Entered on [2019-01-22 Tue 10:01]

* Drop gang story

A revolution in delivery. Delivery of things that the authorities would rather
not be delivered.

#+BEGIN_QUOTE
…[A] major change is the use of “dead drops” instead of the postal
system which has proven vulnerable to tracking and interception. Now,
goods are hidden in publicly accessible places like parks and the
location is given to the customer on purchase. The customer then goes
to the location and picks up the goods. This means that delivery
becomes asynchronous for the merchant, he can hide a lot of product in
different locations for future, not yet known, purchases. For the client the
time to delivery is significantly shorter than waiting for a letter or parcel
shipped by traditional means – he has the product in his hands in a
matter of hours instead of days. Furthermore this method does not
require for the customer to give any personally identifiable information to
the merchant, which in turn doesn’t have to safeguard it anymore. Less
  data means less risk for everyone.
#+END_QUOTE

https://boingboing.net/2019/01/14/drone-serviced-dead-drops.html
Entered on [2019-01-24 Thu 10:20]

* Blog post on the problem with being "areligious"

As humans, we should probably have an animating force. Some optimism and reason
to get us out of bed in the morning. Ennui is real and I would hazard a guess
that those without a firm belief in something beyond this life are probably more
at risk for developing the condition than others. I could be wrong.

* GTD is not appropriate for knowledge workers

https://www.reddit.com/r/orgmode/comments/84g0ss/what_are_effective_and_sustainable_techniques_for/dvpuuii/

Entered on [2019-04-21 Sun 13:28]

** Comment on Reddit

If you struggle to keep your system running, that's because it's a bit too
complex. It happened to me too, but there's hope.

I like GTD. I read the book 11 years ago twice, and I started using
OmniOutliner, a general-purpose outliner very similar in spirit to outline-mode.
I then briefly switched to Actiontastic, and then to org-mode which I have been
using ever since.

GTD has some great ideas: centering things around tasks instead of a
calendar-based approach, distinguishing between tasks and events, and capturing
into an inbox.

However, I've also been overwhelmed many times by my own GTD system. It took me
quite a long time to realize GTD is just an opinionated system for execs. I'm
not an exec, neither you are, so it's not a good fit. A big smoking gun is the
need for context tags. If you need contexts, it means you have so many next
actions, you need to filter them to be able to decide what to do next. This
might be OK for a busy middle-manager, the target demographics of David Allen's
initial productivity system at Lockheed. But if you are a knowledge worker, it
is a disaster.

I'm an engineer with a lot of experience in lean production methods. After a lot
of thinking, I realised I could keep GTD's philosophical ideas on how to
structure a productivity system and add a lean execution layer. This is now
pretty much in vogue within the Agile community (it's even becoming a fad), but
it's also an old idea. Arguably Bethelem Steel used this 100 years ago.

So in practice:

I use a single org task file (but this will also work with several files)
    and another one for events The task file has an inbox subtree at the end
    where org capture things get stored I break down big projects into
    relatively small ones that run for a few weeks, with clear precise goals I
    have a simple value stream (TODOx -> PROGx (<-> WAITx) -> DONEx) with its
    corresponding eponymous org keywords I keep agenda views open that show me
    xTODO, xPROG, WAITx and DONEx items (you can also sort by keyword on a single
    agenda view or use org superagenda)

The last part is the key, and that's how other people are implementing fancier
kanbans. I limit my work in progress, so I only have a few PROG tasks. I do the
same thing with xTODOs. That forces me to focus and avoid overplanning waste. If
you plan too much stuff for midterm, plans will get outdated.

Planning in the short term is good. Planning in the long term, is also good. But
mid-term plans lead to overengineered GTD systems. Whenever I want to add tasks
that form part of my plan, but won't be executed immediately, I keep them
without a keyword. Don't overdo these and you will be happy.

* API for org folder
* A Why Worker

The idea here is that you focus on WHY you work, not HOW or for WHOM. Once
you've answered the why, the rest works itself out.

* Method for running one-off scripts on deploys like migrations
* Buzz Aldrin's heart rate during A11 launch: 88 Armstrong: 110

Buzz was as calm as most humans on the couch watching TV.
Entered on [2019-09-15 Sun 11:30]

* Learn Polish so I can read Lem untranslated

Entered on [2019-10-24 Thu 14:06]

* Quote from Kahlil Gibran about @children

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s
longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are
with you yet they belong not to you. Entered on [2019-10-24 Thu 19:22]