Nontrivial Exercises

MindMapping Tools

Yet another powerful tool that I’ve just recently found is MindManager. Actually, it’s introduced me to the whole concept of mind maps, the non-linear method of organizing thoughts and information, more in a tree structure.

The first tool I found appears to be the most widely used – MindManager X5 Pro. Keep in mind that I hadn’t had any exposure to mind mapping before seeing this, but I was completely wow-ed by this tool. After spending the 3 weeks of the free trial period using it, I was even more impressed. Some of the neatest features of MindManager are the ability to integrate with Outlook, MS Project, MS Word or PowerPoint, and the ease of formatting the maps and exporting them as nice pictures to use in other places, e.g. presentations.

The main drawback to me of MindManager is the price – $349 is out of my budget at present. So, I looked around for alternatives.

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Interesting Wiki Tool - TiddlyWiki

I read about an interesting Wiki tool on the EverNote user forum called TiddlyWiki. I’ve just learned about the Wiki tool concept a few weeks ago, and it’s fascinating.

I “downloaded” the TiddlyWiki tool and have started playing around with it. It’s actually just a single html file that has scripting included to create the wiki linking functionality. Here are a couple of things that I had to figure out to get it to work.

• Go to www.tiddlywiki.com to access the default wiki
• In your browser (I’m using Internet Explorer6 SP2), save the file to your local drive
• Because of some weird behavior of Windows XP SP2, you have to open the saved file in an editor and then re-save it under a different name in order to get Windows and Internet Explorer to treat the file in the “My Computer” zone and be able to save your updates. I simply opened the downloaded html file in Notepad, then saved it with a different name – keeping the “.html” extension. You can read about this on the TiddlyWiki site under the ServicePack2Problems section.
• To create your own sections (called “tiddlers”, unfortunately), you first have to edit an existing section. As far as I can tell, there is no way to create a new blank section. I edited the HelloThere section and added a new keyword called MattIndex.
• I then edited my MattIndex section and added new sections as I wanted to.
• I then customized the name of the wiki and the left side menu items by opening the SpecialTiddlers section. This section contains keywords that define these different elements.

I’m not sure exactly what I will do with this tool, but I at least want to explore the wiki concept a bit. If you have any thoughts about this tool or wiki’s in general, I’d love to hear them.

Even Giants Fall

My grandparents were to celebrate their sixty seventh (yes, 67th) wedding anniversary this August. There are countries that have existed for less than sixty seven years, much less marriages. This marriage ended, however, last Wednesday when my grandfather left my grandmother – and left the earth – to go to his true home.

My grandfather was a great man: He loved my grandmother, loved life, loved to laugh, loved to serve other people, loved his family, loved to tickle his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Wise in this life, he invested prudently and accumulated a vast amount of wealth. In fact, the exact value of his inheritance isn’t even known yet – and probably will not be for some time.

So wise were my grandparents in their investing and estate planning, that they have actually been able to pass along a vast amount of their wealth to their family already – without having to pay any taxes. In fact, they set-up an investment scheme that pays dividends, compounded generationally, whose principal is guaranteed and whose rate of return only grows with each passing year.

My grandparents invested in love, in faith, in service, in family. Yesterday as I watched his casket descend into the ground, I looked around. Standing around this hole in the ground were the initial returns of the investments they both had made: 1 beautiful wife of 66 years, 3 sons with their wives; representatives of 11 grandchildren, 9 of whom are married; representatives of 12 great-grandchildren. Each of these people represented many other lives that have been touched in some way by an element of love, service and goodness that we’ve been able to share – in large part because of the influence and example we’ve had from our family. None of us would have been there were it not for the investments made my my grandfather and grandmother in each of us.

Two summers ago we had a celebration of their sixty fifth wedding anniversary, and I had the opportunity to express my gratitude to them for all they had done for me. I told them that I and my cousins started life standing on the shoulders of giants, towering above most of our peers because we had a foundation of family stability, genuine love and concern for us from our parents and grandparents, and a spiritual legacy of faith in action on which to build.

Four days ago, this giant – my grandfather – fell. For us his family – his investment – sadness and grief come, but only for a time. The tinge of sadness turns quickly to admiration, gratitude, and joy as we look back on his amazing life, and forward to his current state of joy with his Saviour in his forever home, where streets are better than gold. His fall from the earth precedes his rise to everlasting life.

Thanks, Grandpa.

Robert Groves Hollingsworth

August 21, 1915 – May 4, 2005

NoteFlags in EverNote

One of the most useful features of Microsoft OneNote is noteflags – the different types of tags (flags) that you can assign to individual paragraphs within any note. You can use these to note to-do’s, something important that you want to refer to later, an item you want to remember to discuss with your boss, etc. Then, you could view a list of all noteflags of a certain type, e.g. view all new actions you’ve noted, or all items you need to discuss with your boss. For each item, you can check off actions that you’ve completed (or recorded in another action tracking system, like Outlook).

OneNote allows you to define and customize up to 25 different flags. This was one of my favorite features in OneNote and one which I utilized prolifically in my initial use of OneNote.

As I switched to EverNote, one of the biggest drawbacks was the lack of the equivalent noteflag functionality. I really wanted to at least be able to flag three types of information in my notes:

·        Actions that I need to take

·        Actions that others are taking that they will deliver to me

·        Generally important pieces of information

I have developed a basic system of note taking over the past few years whereby I essentially track the above three items. This is easy to do with a paper notebook, but more difficult to do effectively with software. The ability to track at least these three things is a requirement for me, though, in any note taking system I will use.

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