Jan 31, 20070
Contexts? You don’t need no stinkin’ contexts!
Lately, I have become torn with my selection of contexts. I am in IT so I have quite a number of computer related contexts and lately, I have found that it is easier to put everything on my mGTD that I keep with Moleskine Planner/Notebook. There are columns for next action, context, project, waiting for and S/M on the mGTD. I have found myself writing down NA for all of my tasks. Sometimes I will drop a context in the list, sometimes, when applicable, I will put the project down. I do us the waiting for column a lot.
So that has gotten me to think. Do I really need contexts in my current system?
I always have my Moleskine with me and inside there is 2 mGTDs: one blue for work stuff, and one red for personal stuff. When I am in a situation when I am taking notes and not really worrying about creating NAs then I will use the notebook side of my Moleskine and then create NAs at a later time. I think that this is helping me out significantly more than trying to come up with contexts, and managing them separately on their own lists.
One thing that I have not completely worked out is how to handle projects. Most of my actual work day is working projects. My actual support side of my job is usually done as soon as a request comes in. Eighty-five percent of my support calls take under 5 minutes, so they do not see my lists at all. Those that require additional research and coming back at a later time, go directly to my list as soon as I get back into my office. I would love to see the mGTD add a project form to it stable (**hint hint** Stephanos!) then I could keep my Project lists with the associated NAs with me in my Moleskine. I will have some time next week to really ruminate on this as I will be at a conference in Huntsville, Alabama for 3 nights. I plan on using my alone time in the hotel to think and rethink some aspects in my system to create a better workflow for me. I am also going to try to finally sit down and listen to all of the GTD Fast! CDs, as well as take in a book not yet chosen.
Also on this trip, a little BBP History will be made. Jason and I will finally meet up. Many probably don’t know that Jason and I have never met face to face. We met on the 43Folders boards and found that we had many things in common and struck up a friendship over IM. Hopefully over our lunch, we will start some planning for some things to come on BBP. We both love GTD, and really enjoy having this outlet for our rants and raves about all things productive. So that means that I will be out of pocket until late next week, but I may have another post in me before I leave. We will have to see.
- Michael
Almost lost in the 
If you use Vista Media Center to record TV shows, you can use Vista Movie Maker to edit them.
That's because Movie Maker now supports the proprietary DVR-MS format Windows uses for TV recordings. To edit a show, press Ctrl-I to import media, navigate to your Recorded TV folder and choose the one you want. Then drag the show down to the timeline and have at it. When you're done editing, use the Publish Movie option to save it in the desired format. This is great way to cut out commercials before archiving shows to DVD or copying them to, say, an iPod or Zune. 
Yahoo! Food posts the top 10 foods that facilitate a good night's sleep.
The list has a few of the obvious contenders, like Chamomile tea, warm milk, and turkey, but you're sure to find a new sleep-inducer on this list. The remaining 7 healthy foods are bananas, honey, potatoes, oatmeal, almonds, flaxseeds, and whole-wheat bread. As an added bonus for insomniacs, Yahoo! includes a recipe for muffins that contain several of the sleepy ingredients. Let us know what foods put you out in the comments. 
by Adam Pash
Putting any old video file - like the DivX/Xvid-encoded videos you've downloaded with BitTorrent - onto a DVD to play on your TV can be a daunting task. There's plenty of software that tackles this sort of thing for a price, but as a lover of open source software, free's always my first choice.
Luckily for all of us, authoring playable DVDs from just about any video file has gotten a lot easier in the open source community. This week I'm going to show you how to burn those 
The General tab lets you set the size of your target media (i.e., the capacity of your DVD). If you're burning to a standard DVD-R, you'll want to keep the default 4.3GB setting. However, you can also set your target size to Dual Layer DVD, Mini-DVD, CD-R, or your own custom target size.
The Video tab lets you set the format of your DVD player - namely whether your DVD should be NTSC or PAL-formatted. If you live in the US, NTSC is your pal. Most of Europe and Asia, on the other hand, use PAL. You can also set the encoding quality in the Encoding profile drop-down. If you feel that the quality of your authored DVDs isn't high enough, you might want to try upping the quality and ensuring the "Second encoding pass" checkbox is ticked. If you're more than happy with quality but you want to speed up the encoding process, you can lower the quality and get rid of the second encoding pass (you probably won't want to do this, but just in case, there it is).
Also of note, the Burning tab lets you set the options for the final product. If you don't have a DVD on-hand for burning, for example, you can tell DVD Flick to create an ISO image that you can easily burn to a DVD later on using a tool like 
DVD Flick is pretty no nonsense at this point; you can't build any fancy menu screens. 
Before you start, pick the directory that the transcoded files will be saved to while DVD Flick works. You'll need to have a drive with a fair amount of space, so keep that in mind. You'll also want to keep that in mind so you can remove those files after the process is complete so you don't end up with a hard drive full of pre-burned DVDs.
Now that you've got everything set up how you want, click the button labeled 
Firefox only: Open multiple windows within each tab with Split Browser, a new Firefox extension.
Once installed, you simply right-click, select "Split Browser to" from the context menu, and then choose a direction: above, below, left or right. Each new window is like a mini browser, complete with its own address bar and navigation controls. You can drag links into any of the windows and even move windows around. However, there's one rather annoying glitch: When you load a favorite, it appears only in the original window, not the window that last had focus.
Even so, this comes in really handy if you want to keep certain snippets of information visible at all times, like an eBay auction or a calendar. It's an especially great way to take advantage of those widescreen monitors, which have all that extra screen estate. Split Browser is free and works wherever Firefox does. 
My Vista notebook's a lowly 2.2 compared to Gizmodo's 3.7. Kind of a like a GPA for your PC's hardware and it's ability to handle the Vista monster, Gizmodo's Jason Chen interprets the "Windows Experience Index" numeric scale:
Windows Vista is officially in stores today, but before you plunk down your hard-earned cash, make sure you're getting what you expect. With Vista's ability to adjust its features based on the hardware it's on, CNET reports:
Windows only: Freeware app Paint.NET is a powerful, lightweight image editing alternative to Photoshop and GIMP.
We've mentioned Paint.NET on a 
Web site Midomi lets you find the name of a song by humming or singing a few bars of the unknown tune.
We've posted about similar search tools before, most notably 
The Official Google Blog has posted a brief introduction on how to control how Google and other search engines index your web site.
If you've ever looked into this subject before, you know that search engines all look for a simple file on your server called 
When you're upgrading your PC to Windows Vista this week and you're missing hardware drivers, check out RadarSync's collection of Vista drivers, compiled in one place for your download pleasure.
Windows Vista is better than you'll expect at finding drivers for your obscure whoozywhatsit card, but this bookmark's a good one to have, just in case. 
Studying for a test? You can't beat flashcards for help with memorization. Memorizable.org combines tables and wikis to let you create web-based flashcards.
Using simple wiki markup language, you build a table containing the items you need to memorize: words and definitions, flags of various countries, music notation and so on. You're not limited to text; tables can include graphics as well. Once you've built your table, you can quiz yourself on the questions or the answers, using either a flashcard or match-game method.
This is one busy site--a little confusing at first, especially if you've never worked with wikis before. But once you learn the ropes (everything is spelled out pretty clearly), you're sure to find this a killer memorization tool. In the meantime, don't miss 
Send and share your files (up to 100 MB) with Senduit, a simple filesharing application.
Here's how it works: navigate to Senduit, find the file you want to share with someone, upload it (took me about 20 seconds to upload a 518 KB file), and then Senduit gives you a URL where your file can be accessed - this link goes inactive after 30 minutes. Click on the URL and your file starts downloading immediately. It's an extremely non-complicated way to share larger files, that's for sure. 
Lifehack.org's Kyle Pott details how he lost 50 pounds in 3 months by following a few simple rules. For example:
Move over, Partition Magic. Windows Vista has built-in hard drive partition management with the ability to shrink, create and format new partitions without the dreaded fdisk, third-party software, or even rebooting your PC.
With a few clicks through a wizard or two you can take free space on your hard drive and make it a whole 'nother partition right inside Vista to store your data or turn on file encryption (more on that later). Check out a quick step by step on partition management inside Vista. 
Windows only: Access and share files remotely with Avvenu, a free service that works with PCs, PDAs and smartphones.
Simply install the Avvenu client on your PC and leave it running. Now fire up the browser on any remote PC or handheld (the latter requiring web access, of course), login to your account and presto: You've got full access to your system's files, which you can then view, search, download and share. If you want this kind of access even when your computer is off, you can sign up for one of Avvenu's Anytime Files accounts, which start at $3.99 per month.
Avvenu's interface can be confusing, and I've yet to figure out how to hide drives and documents (in case I don't want to make absolutely everything available for remote access). There's ample online help, but this particular question doesn't seem to be addressed anywhere.
You may be happier with a more full-featured remote access tool like 
With just four days to go until Windows Vista ships, you may still be on the fence about whether to upgrade (at least 30 percent of you are, judging from our 
Newly-hatched webapp Footnote offers an impressive database of original historical documents for searching, viewing, annotating and discussing.
See detailed images of historical documents over 100 years old like the Bill of Rights or the Gettysburg address (pictured above) in a modern, dynamic interface. Footnote offers many images for zooming and browsing for free, but you can buy a single image for 2 bucks, or become an "All Access" member for about 10 bucks a month. Great resource for history buffs, students and researchers who need primary sources. See also Wendy's past feature on 