International CouchSurfing Day June 12, 2009
Posted by onemouthband in : Recommendations, Travels , add a comment
Today (June 12th) is the holiday I live year-round: International CouchSurfing Day! I’ve posted about the beauties of CouchSurfing before, but I didn’t previously post my profile.
Yes, after 16-months, I am still a professional CouchSurfer. That is, I have no real residence, or even plans to get one. I offloaded a bunch of my stuff, and my remaining meager possessions are in storage. Between my music and web work I spend lots of time traveling, so visiting friends/family, housesitting/petsitting, and staying places off of the CouchSurfing.org website continues to work out great! Lucky me!
How I keep my email in check June 10, 2009
Posted by onemouthband in : Productivity, Recommendations, Tech , add a comment
In the last year I’ve made a lot of headway with my management of email. I know a lot you out there still struggle with what to do with that mounting mountain of amorphous stuff in your inbox, so I’d like to remind you that you really only have five things you could possibly do with any email after you read/skim it. They are:
- Delete it
Do it
Defer it
Delegate it
Archive it
I didn’t figure this out myself, I read about it at Merlin Mann’s site or something (I don’t remember, but you can find a great summary of his “Inbox Zero” approach at his presentation to Google). After lots of testing and tweaking, here are how I have implemented it.
Deleting
I now delete 50-60% of my email just as soon as I read it. I used to be an email packrat, but my life is much better now that I just trash the stuff that would otherwise clutter any future searches.
Doing
Following the GTD methodology, I typically ONLY do this if I am relatively sure I can finish in less than two minutes. I’m still wrong half the time, but not by much.
Deferring
Omnifocus is my task management system of choice these days, mostly because it works so well with the iPhone, the Mac, and I can have my virtual assistants use it as well.
Delegating
Most anything that I can give to someone else and have them do at least a good a job as me, I give away now. I’m still successfully outsourcing tasks and projects to Longer Days, but this category includes handing things off to family, friends, groups, etc.
Archiving
After experimenting with several different scenarios, I now have three different archives: Archive30, Archive365, and Keepers. Archive30 is for things that are only potentially relevant for the next 1 to 30-days, and that’s probably 80% of anything I keep. Archive365 is the same thing but for up to a year. Keepers is for stuff I’ll probably keep forever (memberships, receipts, meaningful/sentimental, etc.). I wish my mail program allowed me to mark everything with an expiry date and automatically deleted it without me having to see it again, but it doesn’t. So every once and a while I just grab everything beyond the alloted 30 or 365 days and trash it myself.
Folders
I used to have an intricate storage system for every email and struggle over where best to store them. Now there are only five folders in my email program. FIVE! Aside from the 3 archive folders, there’s my Inbox (which I clear out as many times as possible, at least every day or two), and my Backlog folder. Backlog is my totally arbitrary dividing line that allowed me to have an empty Inbox. One day, I basically took everything before a week previous and dumped it into Backlog. When I have time (which is almost never), I go into this folder and delete, do, defer, delegate, and archive appropriately. There are thousands of emails in there that I mostly ignore, and nothing has bitten me in the ass just yet. I also have a few “smart mailboxes” which I’d like to talk about, but since that’s a feature unique to my Mac Mai program,l I’ll leave it to a future post.
Accounts
I used to have about 30 separate email accounts. Now I have 8 and I only really use 3, two for my eLearning/web business (one client makes me have an address at their company that I can’t just forward, the others let me use or forward my own), and one for my music business and personal use. I use Gmail for my music/personal and a different Gmail for my eLearning/web needs. The reasons are:
- I can download it all to my computer for storage/search
- I can read/send it from any online computer, anytime (including my iPhone)
- They have the best spam filters going (most accurate and least false positives from all the dozens of options I’ve tried over the last 5 years!)
- I can do cool tricks like adding a “+string” before the atsign to filter, sort, and apply rules and commands (more on that in a future post)
In my humble opinion, there is no reason to have an email account anywhere else unless there is some other unique circumstance. I forward most of my old 30 emails to the new primary one with no trouble.
Unsubscribing
How many emails do you get that you never really needed to see anyway? Almost anything that fell into my “nice to know about” category is now no longer coming to my Inbox in the first place. Just be sure you ALWAYS USE THE UNSUBSCRIBE LINK OR REPLYTO, don’t just mark stuff as spam because that hurts the honast people who are trying to get honast information out to people who honastly care. As somebody who sends out newsletters occasionally, I know what a drag it can be to get marked as spam when you’re not. If try and you can’t unsubscribe, then it really is spam. In Gmail if you mark it as such, you won’t have to worry about seeing it ever again.
Searching
Any searches I run search everything within my email program. That’s all my email from everywhere except Yahoo, which I am phasing out because I can’t download it without paying them $30/year. Because I have a Mac, every time I do a search in the OS, it also finds any related emails as well as files. But even on a PC you should be able to do the same thing with Google Desktop.
Hope this helps you break through the email bog and get some real work done!
Enabling the right “Save As…” key command for Microsoft Office June 7, 2009
Posted by onemouthband in : Mac, Recommendations, Tech , add a comment
Those of you who know me well know how much I detest poor design. For this reason (and a few others), I stay away from Microsoft products whenever I can. It’s not that every single thing Microsoft puts out is bad, but from past experience I know that the odds are I’m going to get frustrated with some aspect of their non-intuitive design within about 5-10 minutes of just opening any of their software. Now I have to use some Microsoft stuff for my current contract as an eLearning Developer with AAA (OpenOffice should ideally work for everything that Microsoft Office does, but in practice it doesn’t).
So the other day I’m working with creating dozens of files from one sample version in MS Word and I hit the key command CMD+SHIFT+S to “Save As…“ On PC, it’s CTRL+SHIFT+S, but I know that this works in nearly every other application for which it would be relevant. It’s as transparent as CMD+S for “Save” or CMD+X and CMD+V for “Cut” and “Paste“. Why doesn’t it work in Word!?! (Instead it highlights the text formatting setting! Right, real useful there Microsofties!)
So I asked my friends at Longer Days to figure out how to make the same command that works everywhere else on my Mac/PC, work here. So they sent me the following nifty, little screencast which I present to you to make your life that much simpler. Enjoy!
customizing-toolbars-ms-word-2007
You can also use this method to customize all the key commands you like for MS Office and have them shared across the whole suite. In case you care, the UNDOCUMENTED default setting to “Save As” in MS Office is F12, which is alright for PC but opens the dashboard in Mac. I just made both F12 and CMD+SHIFT+S do the same thing, which is what Microbrains should have done. (I don’t know why people insist on doing things the dumb way so much when the smart way is so much easier)
“Taste of TaKeTiNa” Rhythm Journey - POSTPONED! May 12, 2009
Posted by onemouthband in : Music, Recommendations, TaKeTiNa , add a comment
“Like Zen presence training, but infinitely groovier.”
TaKeTiNa workshops are usually 2-3 days long, but this Sunday in Fairfax is a great chance to get a low-commitment taste of it in on a lazy afternoon. Our TaKeTiNa Rhythm Journey will include one or two deceptively simple, polyrhythmic adventures in stepping, clapping, and singing. Surprisingly deep yet accessible to all levels, this participatory music healing modality fosters a sense of peace/stillness and can enable profound connections to other areas of life. No musical or movement experience is necessary, just curiosity (though extra bonus points will be awarded if you bring a sense of humor!).
Please come enjoy the musical and meditative group rhythm process called TaKeTiNa, it’s Rhythm for Evolution!
WHEN: 3:30-5:30PM, Sunday 5/17 THIS EVENT HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED FOR SUNDAY 6/21 (FATHER’S DAY) FROM 3-5PM!
WHERE: 56 Bolinas Rd Fairfax, CA 94930 (Dance Theater Seven)
COST: sliding scale donation $10-20
Please RSVP via email or Facebook, and if you have any questions, just ask! Thanks!
Elance your projects May 6, 2009
Posted by onemouthband in : Productivity, Recommendations , add a comment
I’m always biting off more than I can chew with projects. One way I keep my head above water when things get busy is through Elance. Think of it like a cross between eBay and Craigslist, but for freelancers. Basically, you can post a project and have professionals from all over the world bid on the job, award it to whoever you think can do it best (based on an elaborate rating system and posted samples of their work), then manage it and even pay for it through the free escrow services on this amazing website.
I’ve been doing this for a few years now, and here are some projects I’ve outsourced:
- “soup to nuts” website creation
- graphic design
- iPhone app development
- virtual assistant services
- Microsoft SharePoint Consulting
- Joomla site installation help
Elance is for way more than technical stuff, though. From proofreading to legal services to engineering to marketing support, you can find it here. Soon I’ll be providing my professional voiceover services via Elance, as well. It’s a meager amount of work to set up and WAY worth it.
Happy outsourcing!
25% Off a Journey into The Heart of Rhythm & Sound April 27, 2009
Posted by onemouthband in : Recommendations, TaKeTiNa , add a commentMy good friend James is leading a TaKeTiNa workshop this weekend, and if you say you know me or click below you can get a 25% discount on the price. I would be there to join in the fun, but I’m singing at a wedding in Mexico that weekend. Don’t worry, I’ll try not to catch any swine flu!
This weekend, come immerse yourself in rhythm, movement, and singing - and explore a timeless state of relaxation, self-awareness, and inner silence.
Our increasingly technological and intellectual society leaves little room for natural, self development, or the time to learn at our own pace. More often than not, we find ourselves in states of anxiety or boredom: feeling rushed, judged, or competitive, or disconnected, listless, or unengaged. This workshop is an opportunity to let go of these life patterns, and reconnect to the part of ourselves that is at peace in every life situation.
In this workshop, with the support of the leader and the entire group, you will use your body and voice as an instrument, to directly experience natural rhythms. You will be invited to explore the effects that feeling and moving in rhythm can have on your brain and nervous system. No previous music experience is necessary. The TaKeTiNa process harnesses the innate, rhythmic intelligence that already exists in the human body.
Benefits Include:
- Stress Reduction
- Self Awareness and Inner Silence
- Integration of Mind and Body
- Synchronization of Brain Hemispheres
- Increased Creativity and Intuition
Rhythm in Action experiences are led by James Word, a certified
TaKeTiNa teacher. His training included many years of skill building
and personal development - which integrated his background in Zen and
Psychology to create an effective and compassionate leader.Normal Price: $169
Special Price: $144 if you use the “sam” discount code:
http://rhythminactionweekend.eventbrite.com/?discount=samor call 415-218-6758 and say “Sam sent me.”
Location:
Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CASpecific Dates & Times:
Saturday, May 2 : 10:00am - 6:00pm
Sunday, May 3 : 10:00am - 6:00pm
I’m in USA Today! April 25, 2009
Posted by onemouthband in : One Mouth Band, Travels , add a comment
This just in from USA Today’s piece on the highlights of the first day of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival:
Slide guitar ace Roy Rogers wowed a packed house in the blues tent with new Little Queen Bee and Calm Before the Storm (sung by son Sam), a sizzling version of Robert Johnson’s Terraplane Blues and rousing tunes with pianist Marcia Ball.
Well, almost…
I don’t know if it’s ever happened to you, but in my experience whenever I get any media coverage (newpaper, magazine, radio, TV, etc.), there’s about a 50/50 chance they’ll get it right. It used to bug me, but knowing the reasons for it a little better, I don’t really care that much. The truth is that I didn’t sing the lead, but rather the bass part in my One Mouth Band lip-buzzing fashion. I’m just glad people are talking about me!
By the way, USA Today did another feature on my Dad and the release of his new album Split Decision (featuring yours truly on berimau and vocal bass!).
Train across Australia April 1, 2009
Posted by onemouthband in : Notes to Self, Travels , add a commentI had taken some little Flip video footage of my January train trip from Perth to Sydney on (which takes 3.5 days!) and figured I’d get around to editing and posting it here sooner or later. Then one of the folks I shared the journey with sent me this. His is WAAAAY better!
Indian Pacific - The transAustralian journey from Martin Øen on Vimeo.
Martin is from Norway, just out of college, and likes to film and surf. We had some good in-depth discussions/debates toward the end of the journey, and I was very happy to receive his email and video documentary today. (Thanks, Martin!)
My trip on The Indian Pacific was great! Watching this brought back a lot of memories, like:
- Singing with Carinne from Perth to Adelaide.
- Having a steady stream of people who are “more than a little bit off” pick me out of everybody on the whole train to talk to. Including a 86 year-old jazz singer from Sydney who told me he gave Mark Murphy his start, “farts better than Kurt Elling“, and gave me a list of songs I needed to sing in between crying his way through the lyrics.
- The 50-degree Celsius (122-Fahrenheit) heat of the Nullarbor that overpowered the train’s air conditioner, and the 2PM announcement that “We’re aware of the situation and are doing everything we can to make the train cooler. We understand things will cool a bit by sundown.” Other people suffered, but after some of my experiences at Burning Man, I managed alright.
- The flies of Cook. Oh yes, the flies!
- Kicking ass at karaoke in Kalgoorlie at 1AM. Thank you Wilson Pickett, where ever you are!
- My jittery Gansta-wannabe seatmate from Adelaide to Sydney bumming food off me and smoking in the lavatory as I helped him evade detection.
- Meeting a whole assortment of backpackers from all over the world (like Martin) who are just out exploring in a very open and honest way, like myself. Australia is a great place to go walkabout.
- Finally getting off the train, finding my body in the same shape as the uncomfortable chair I had been sitting in for over 3-days, and going off to sit in with Mr. Percival at the country’s biggest jazz venue, which wound up changing my life in ways I never could have imagined.
Driving in the OneMouthBandMobile March 27, 2009
Posted by onemouthband in : Hybrid Cars, Travels , add a comment
I love my car, and I don’t mind showing it. I think it’s perfect that a Prius drives by at one point, too.
Miss The Rat Trio at the SF Harmony Sweeps? March 17, 2009
Posted by onemouthband in : Music, The Irrationals , add a commentLast Saturday night The Rat Trio had a blast singing our new TV medley at The Palace of Fine Arts as part of the 2009 San Francisco Regional Harmony Sweepstakes. In case you weren’t able to see it, my little FlipVideo camera was! So here you go:
